


Lady Vail's Pack

by brightephemera



Series: Vail!verse [1]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: F/M, Found Family, Gen, Pallegina comes in a little late but she's there, Rangers, Retelling of the main story, Slow Burn, Unrequited Love, but I’m not transcribing game conversations, don’t worry I’m not failing to recruit people, extremely sporadic romance, ranger class OC with puppy, the dog doesn’t die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 85
Words: 70,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22138648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightephemera/pseuds/brightephemera
Summary: Ranger Vailond and her wolf companion Tyrhos have faced every adventure an illegal poacher could dream of. Then a career move that should have put her up in a comfortable lifestyle instead rewrites her ideas of what dreams can do. She'll need to make friends. That requires adjustment, but it's better than facing souls, gods, and history alone.
Relationships: Aloth Corfiser & Female Watcher
Series: Vail!verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1895248
Comments: 32
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

“Pleased to meet you! Aloth Corfiser, at your service.”

Vailond swayed on her feet. Beside her, the gray wolf Tyrhos whined quiet concern.

“And you are…?” said the fellow elf before her.

“Wondering why exactly you told that man to fuck his sister,” said Vailond, forcing focus through fatigue. She touched Tyrhos’s neck for support. She looked past the elf to the three retreating drunkards whom she had scared away from a fight with a few chosen words. Okay, a few chosen words and the sight of an intelligent, growling wolf. The street was muddy and the wind was chill and so far the village of Gilded Vale had shown her nothing but stinking flesh. “Honestly, I wasn’t going to get involved, I just wanted them to understand what they were getting into. Which, apparently, is a crazy person.”

Aloth had a high pale forehead that was a little crinkled just at that moment. “Ah, a misunderstanding. The Aedyran accent can be trying.”

“Pretty sure that wasn’t it,” she said in her Aedyran accent. Still, one man’s choice of taunts was not her problem, and she was tired. “Listen, do you know where the inn here is?”

“About ten feet to your right,” Aloth said calmly. “You’re a traveler, then. Bound for some place more welcoming than this, I hope?”

“Probably not,” she said. Having made herself a bandit in her homeland of Aedyr, she was here to make herself a bandit in the green lands promised by one Lord Raedric. Not a highwayman, nothing of the sort; poaching was her specialty, and the countryside she’d come through to get here promised a rich lifestyle. “I’ll be out of the way soon enough.”

“There’s safety in traveling in numbers,” he suggested hopefully.

She looked him over. His boots were smeared with mud, his gloves stiff with grime, but they were fitted, well-made, and embroidered. Here was a man that civilization favored. This was the kind of man whose lands she illegally lived off of. “And what can you do, then? Walk six leagues a day? Draw a bow? Build traps, set snares, avoid predators, gut prey, move silently?”

He looked worried. “Well, in point of fact…”

No mercy. “Yes?”

“No,” he said weakly. “Of course. I’ll be on my way at once.”

He turned to the inn. She turned to the inn. They bumped into one another walking.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. Vailond just moved forward, Tyrhos at her side. For a while she sat at a little table and watched the sullen soaking of the locals, all of whom were drinking even more than she – and she was doing her level best at drinking.

A man stumbled past, bumped into her table, and spent some effort stabilizing himself. She felt something purple and sparkling from him. Unable to put a name to it, she leaned in…

…and was suddenly somewhere else. The world was drenched in purple, somewhat like sandpaper in the mind. The man was traveling down a road, regretting something bitterly. He had dropped one box in the road, and she knew it had contained the trappings of an old obligation, one as dear as life. Whatever that was, it wasn’t coming with him, and never would.

The vision scraped away and she recoiled. As she struggled to right her chair and sit properly the man lurched off as though he hadn’t felt a thing.

She stayed up late. She drank. But she was very tired, and maybe some rest would stop the visions. She paid for the cheapest room, and Tyrhos settled beside her cot while she tried to sleep.

The bîaŵac whistled in Vailond’s ears as she dreamed. She saw pillars of adra, that weird green substance that grew from the ground like teeth. She saw ghosts like the purple waking visions of the past day, struggling, crying out to her, though she did not know their names. She had felt wrong since witnessing the ritual of the Engwithan machine in the height of the bîaŵac. Now that wrongness came to nestle in her heart, the touch of the dead, the echo of souls.

She was used to being alone. In her little room she fought her demons by herself until she awoke with Tyrhos’ muzzle on her stomach. The wolf looked at her with big dark-rimmed blue eyes and whined.

She scritched his ears and tried not to think. “I’m up,” she said softly, and went downstairs.


	2. The Dwarf Offers a Label (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond observes the hanging tree of Gilded Vale and is herself observed in turn.

Bîaŵac. A soul flayer. It had overtaken Vailond’s caravan on the road to Gilded Vale, wailing over the dead…and she had fled. She had fled all the way through the countryside to a ritual seemingly meant to feed on the terrible wind. Something about it had caused these visions of the dead, newly raw yet somehow ancient beyond her ability to sense the texture. It made no sense. She itched to return to the forest and her normal life. But she had to reverse this first.

She didn’t understand what was happening, but an animancer might. One problem: the loud man who had ungraciously greeted her at the entrance to Gilded Vale had said that every animancer in town had been hanged in the big tree in the square. Lord Raedric had tried everything, or at least every summary execution, to cleanse the village. Because this place, like every place in the Dyrwood, had birthed a horrible portion of Hollowborn in fifteen years: soulless children, unresponsive, breathing without living. Waidwen’s Legacy, they called it, their punishment for destroying the Effigy of Eothas in the Saint’s War.

The Legacy hung over all children in the Dyrwood. Mothers still hoped. Mothers always did. Vailond had heard about it years ago and sometimes felt a pang, though in an elf's seventy-eight years she had never found a life’s mate and probably never would. It was bad enough just to imagine bringing a child to term and finding that it would never recognize her.

Vailond drifted toward the huge tree in the town square. Over a dozen grisly corpses hung from thick ropes around the neck. Whatever was happening here, it was keeping the birds away. The cycle of predation was fouled. She wondered how exactly these townspeople murdered their unfavored before stringing them up. City folk had funny ideas of butchery.

Her eyes settled on a glow of purple around one of the lord’s victims. A dwarf in ill-fitting clothes. Vailond couldn’t describe it, but she reached out…

…and touched something.

Vailond’s world turned purple and strange, as if she had stepped just outside it and was peering back through colored glass. The dwarven woman grinned through rotting teeth and began to speak in a thick Vailan accent. Caldara de Berranzi was her name, and her voice crept through Vailond’s mind like blood seeping through fissures in a log. She gave Vailond a name: Watcher. One sensitive to souls, to something beyond ordinary perception. Something a strong soul might become, when unfolded past endurance.

At length Vailond ran out of questions, or rather, desperate attempts to be told that being a Watcher could be reversed. Caldara was coy and mocking. She spoke of a man named Maerwald in a place called Caed Nua, but gave no further details. Vailond finally pulled away.

The purple faded. The dwarf was dead: no moving eyes, no wakened tongue. Vailond drifted toward the sturdy tree trunk and eyed its bark. When important things happened, she relieved her mind by making tally marks of important things on trees. Her short moments of stillness were marked in memorized trees from here to central Aedyr.

 _Live through this,_ she thought, and dug her knife’s tip into a smooth expanse of the tree’s dusty gray bark. Then, rather than draw the line, she withdrew and sheathed her knife. The little cut was a promise.

She felt someone staring. Not Watcher vision, just plain intuition. She turned to see a big man with straw-colored hair and a thick fist full of clay pipe.

“Seventeen and a half,” he said, rubbing a blond beard. “Maybe eighteen depending on how you count the dwarf.”

“I’m sorry?” she said.

“That’d make me nineteen,” he said calmly. Somewhere a bird caroled.


	3. Two Recruitments (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond finds someone with an odd sense of humor, and reconsiders a previous offer of help from Aloth.

Vailond stood facing the armored human and followed what he’d said. “You’re expecting to be hanged?”

“Well, you made it look so interesting. Didn’t blink for a solid five minutes.” His smile was strangely warm. “Follow the wrong god, you might get numbered too.”

Warm, but not excited. “Have you considered feeling upset over this?”

He shrugged, seeming not to mind the weight of his scale armor. “Don’t know that it’s worth the effort. We’ve got a lot of emotional people here already.”

He spoke calmly, easily. He looked at Tyrhos quite a lot. In fact, he interrupted himself to say, “Can I pet him?”

Tyrhos bared his teeth. So did Vailond. “No,” she said.

“Are you sure? He looks like a nice dog.”

“He’s a wolf, and you’ve got some nerve.” Still, there was something about him. “Are they really mad at you for…but you’re not an animancer.”

He laughed. “No. Not so bad as that. I fought in the Saint’s War. Brother did, too. Rumor got round that he was on the wrong side, and, well, add that to me being Eothasian….”

Mercenary or veteran. In Vailond’s experience they were much the same: coarse, expensive, and inclined to make her grateful for her wolf’s vigilance. But they had their uses. “Listen, if you’re not in a hurry for your number on the tree, I’m on my way to some place called Caed Nua. I could use company on the road.”

He abruptly jammed his pipe back into his mouth and looked out through the hanging tree like there was something to see there. Half a minute later he said, “Caed Nua. I have heard of it. An animancer named Maerwald used to live there, help with all kinds of soul problems. That might…oh. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.” He stopped drifting and looked at her with bright blue eyes. “I’m interested.”

“So you’re in?”

“Can I pet him?”

“No.”

“That’s all right, I guess.” He emptied his pipe and tucked it into a pouch at his belt. “Well, that’s all the packing I need. Where to?”

He was big, and as they walked together he moved like he knew how to handle himself. This could be bad. A second stranger of different extraction and purpose might break up the tension, or at least offer a fifty-fifty shot when a crisis came up.

And in this strange land, following questions of metaphysics or religion or other things beyond her ken, she needed help.

“Let’s go to the inn,” she said. “I might meet someone there.”

“Someone in particular?” he said, eyeing her as if expecting anything.

“I’m not sure.”

“Suspense. I can respect that.” She shot him a suspicious look. He looked completely serious.

The fellow elf was in the common room, seated in a corner, fussing with his gloves. He looked like he was afraid to go back on the road again, but also a little afraid to sit still.

She brought him an ale. “Educated, aren’t you?” she said flatly as she slammed it down.

Aloth looked at the ale and at her. “Yes, by most standards. Why do you ask?”

“Do you work with souls at all?”

“Animancy? I’m afraid not. My studies always tended toward the arcane.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

He was paying full attention to her face. “Does anything prompt such an unusual question?”

“Not if you don’t have answers. It’s not safe to get answers in this town. Fine. I…may need protection until we reach a city, and I can protect you in turn. One Aedyran to another. Is your offer of travel still open?”

His scan of her, her ragged clothes, her mud-caked boots, her bow and knife, her wolf, her large companion, started and ended at once. “Yes,” he said, sounding surprised and…pleased? “It's Defiance Bay, then?”

“I’ve got some things to clean up. Could be messy. Come with me?”

“It’s preferable to waiting here,” he said. “I should repeat, my name is Aloth…?”

“I’m Vailond. This is Tyrhos. He likes you.”

“How do I tell?”

“Your throat's still there.”

“I…see.”

“I’m Edér,” Edér volunteered cheerfully. “I swore off ripping out throats a while back.”

“Well, that does make you gracious for a local,” Aloth said, sounding strained. “Where to?”

“Drink first,” she ordered. “It may be a long day.”

The four came back out into the dull gray light of day. Only a few villagers stood around talking, most of them near the hanging tree, as if it were so much furniture. The energy of the men with Vailond only served to highlight the stupor of the town. In a way, it was already in ruins.

Well, time to scavenge what she could and get out.

Edér slowed within a few paces. “There’s one thing I’d like to see done before we shake the dust off.”

Mercenaries: expensive. “What’s that?” she said.

“You can see the temple of Eothas there.” He gestured down the street. There was a big scorched square lined in battered ash-smeared stones. “That’s just about what people think of Eothas these days, what with the Legacy.” He chewed his pipe for a moment. “A few years back, one of Lord Raedric’s ideas was to shutter it all. It's gone silent. Then it got even less popular and it went to pieces. I thought we might take a look around, set things in order.”

“But its god is dead.”

“His followers aren't,” he said mildly. “I mean, some of ‘em.”

If she was to get by in the city, she would need copper and gold. A temple might provide. “You go first,” she said.


	4. Tribute to Eothas; Legacy of Waidwen (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond finds her companions' mettle and hears unwelcome news from Raedric.

Vailond did not like enclosed spaces. Thus, creeping downstairs into a twisty walled-off darkness had convinced her of her error in judgment before they’d reached the first landing. Edér walked out ahead, waving a torch too small for this darkness. Vailond kept an arrow in her hand. Tyrhos padded behind her, meeting her eyes whenever she looked for him. Aloth was behind her keeping his shining cloak clear of the grimy walls of the destroyed temple.

“It was different when I was younger,” Edér said thoughtfully. “Bright. Warm.”

Vailond was spared the conversation by a chittering in the hallway. She had an arrow nocked and aimed by the time the waist-high spider had entered Edér’s circle of light.

Tyrhos bounded past her and she fired past him. The arrow struck true. The spider was busy trying to eat Edér’s saber. Aloth was doing something with bright purple motes. Tyrhos landed behind the spider and started savaging its bloated abdomen. Flanked and sinking into panicked flailing, it made nothing but a long scratching sound when its legs stopped moving and its body sank slowly down.

Edér gave the battlefield a thorough look before relaxing. “He knows how to do that?” he said cheerfully. “Good boy.” He sheathed his saber. For a moment the man seemed lost to the world. The wolf was all.

Which meant he couldn’t be all bad. Vailond gave her usual approving “tut” and then inclined her head toward the human. She trusted the animal’s instincts beyond that.

Tyrhos walked slowly toward him. Edér’s face lit up. “Can I pet him?”

“Relax, Tyrhos. There, if he wants—”

Tyrhos closed the distance in a lunge and rammed his head under Edér’s palm. The human laughed and stroked. “Who's a good boy?”

“He never does that,” observed Vailond. She wasn't jealous, as such. No reason to be. This was just another person along for a few days, as had happened before.

They continued, and Edér formed a neat counterpoint to Tyrhos in the melee of restless spirits and raging tunnelers. Aloth whispered to himself more often than not, then lit up entire hallways with magical sabotage, making everyone’s job easier. She did take money and valuables where she found them. Even Edér didn’t gainsay her.

They found a chapel lined by lit candles, dozens of them For rebirth, Edér said. He described the ritual that made redemption and rebirth possible. “Surprised they’re still burning.”

“Me too.” Of all the miracles to waste one’s energy on…lights in a dead man’s basement. How many people in that waxy bank were even still alive? She would extinguish the bunch, only, it seemed to mean a lot to Edér. Vailond wasn’t stupid enough to come between a man and his religion. They moved on.

At length every basement hallway was mapped and emptied. The candles continued being creepy. The group turned their steps topside, ready to find a place to relax.

They came out into a fine rain. “Oh,” said Aloth. “It got worse.” He was probably still upset about the spider ichor on his cloak.

“Takes worse than this to make the mud any deeper,” Edér said, seemingly relaxed. “Mud’s a real nuanced thing around Gilded Vale. Or maybe we just tell ourselves that.”

A bell rang from somewhere out of sight. Edér tensed and looked up and out. The bell rang again.

“Come on,” he said quietly. “Stop there.”

It rang again.

“Blast it.” The wording was strong but his face showed plain grief. “That’s Raedric’s child. Hollowborn like the rest.” He looked at Vailond with new urgency. “They’ll be looking for a scapegoat, and sniffing through an Eothasian temple is a little obvious. We’d best be somewhere other than here by nightfall.”

Vailond nodded sharply. She didn’t enjoy spending time in other people’s sorrow, particularly if it started taking the form of a mob. “Let’s get walking.”

She thought, as they took the south road, that torches were moving in the gray behind them. She walked faster. The others kept up.


	5. Aloth and the Stars (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond gets a crash course in astronomy from Aloth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A partial version of this chapter was published elsewhere.

The landscape south of Gilded Vale was one of low stony hills and careless flowers. Vailond looked for the places where a hunter might shelter with command over streams and animal trails. Yes, this land was perfect. Even if Raedric didn’t give it away, she could enjoy it on her own terms. Just as soon as she was rid of the Watcher visions.

The rain had cleared up and the stars were coming out. Vailond turned her attention to good hiding places for a camp. She wasn’t sure how sturdy her companions were. Aloth might need a servant with a feather fan.

Aloth, as though summoned, appeared at her side. “So,” he said. “You’re a long way from home.”

“Home’s here,” said Vailond, pointing at her boots.

“Ah. I understand.” They walked. “Were you interested in Lord Raedric’s offer of land? It’s very tempting for a lower-ranked child of a crowded empire.”

Vailond shrugged. “Land’s nice.” No homestead could compare in scope and pleasantness of free run of many landowners’ holdings. She almost felt bad about lying to him about her purpose here. But she let it go. Aloth Corfiser was not important to her, not the kind of important that lasted longer than the next camp. “Look, that little patch. Edér?”

“I see it,” said the soldier. It seemed impolite to call him a mercenary when she wasn’t paying him. “I’ll get some firewood.”

It was a copse just barely visible over a ridge from the road, and when Vailond got close she saw it held a perfect little dell. She backtracked to the nearest brook and refilled her waterskin, then set a few snares across likely animal trails. When she came back Edér was building a fire with quick efficient movements and Aloth was nowhere to be seen.

She wasn’t sure what she would see when she slept again. If a Watcher was all about the souls of strangers and a connection to people she’d never known nor given a damn about…well. She wasn’t in a hurry to sleep.

Edér, for his part, started scrubbing something off of his scale mail coat. Tyrhos the wolf lay watching the fire.

Cool night wind, comforting night sounds, no clouds in the sky. Vailond felt alive just existing in it. But…Aloth had been away too long. He hadn’t said anything about disappearing forever, not that it wasn’t his business if he wanted to. Somewhere in Vailond’s limited collection of normal social behaviors was the part about making sure everyone was all right.

“Tyrhos,” she murmured. Edér looked up from his own meditations but didn’t interfere. “Let’s find Aloth.”

Tyrhos waved his nose in one direction and otherwise didn’t move from his spot by the fire. “Lazy,” she scolded, but she went where he pointed.

There was a clearing not far away. If Aloth had had a light, it would have been clearly visible from the campfire. Perfectly in the center, without a light, Aloth was sitting.

“The dark is dangerous,” she said from four feet away.

Aloth jumped. “Cor, if ye’ve nye better to do than loose my entrails...” He coughed. A second later he flourished one hand and a little silver star kindled over his palm. “I'm not worried here,” he said, almost coolly. He extinguished it and looked up.

He talked funny, but there was something about him, too, something grounded. “What are you doing?”

“Looking at the stars.”

“Oh.” She liked that, but she knew she was no expert. “You must know their names.”

“On a night this clear?” His eyes sparkled as they swept the sky. “Most of them,” he said modestly.

“I used to name them.” Years alone in the wilderness would do that.

“Renaming the stars? To what?”

She pointed. “Look, there's the Bear.”

“The Bear is elsewhere. That is the Wagon.”

“And the Other Bear.”

“That is the Spindle and half of the Ship.”

“And there's the Third Bear.”

He frowned at her. “You just made that up.”

“I could go on. Fourth—”

“Please don't. You’re teasing me.”

“You don't like bears? There’s a Cat.”

She sat, feeling like a predator. He sat, looking like prey. He glared at her. She smiled at him.

Slowly, dragging as though forced, he delivered a word. “Where?”

Vailond pointed. “There.”

Aloth threw up his hands. “That's the Bear!”

She laughed. “You asked.”

“I’ll award you points for followthrough,” he said, sounding flustered. “Even if you have strange ideas of what bears are shaped like.”

Vailond sat for a few moments, scanning the sky. When she came back to herself, Aloth was watching, not the stars, but her.

“Anything else to say?” she said.

“No.” He looked up. “Why would there be?”

“I don’t know. You get colorful when you're nervous.” She had her share of tracking when people were nervous. Nervous people were prone to violent acts.

“It's nothing, a simple idiom—”

“You shouldn't be nervous around me.”

He frowned. “But I can't walk so many leagues a day, or any of the rest of it.”

“I know.” But he could lecture on stars, and sit with the darkness and the quiet by himself. “Sometimes you slow down to keep the group together.”

“Oh,” he said. “That's kind of you.”

“One more thing,” she said.

“Yes?”

She thought about sitting by the fire not knowing where he’d gone off to. She thought that she would probably wait for him…who knew how long. “You can leave, any time, any reason. Same as me. But I think…I’d like to know, when you decide to go.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “That’s not too much to ask.”

“Where did you say the actual Bear was?”

Aloth raised one slender hand, pointing. “There. The bright triangle for the head and the square beside it for the body.”

“That could be a cat.”

“It isn’t a cat.”

“I stand by my statement.”


	6. An Interlude with a Canine (Edér)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edér relaxes with his new wolf friend. (cw pet death (reference to a past occurrence))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw pet death (reference to a past occurrence)

Edér sat beside Tyrhos by the fire. Then he edged over until the wolf was curled around him. He pulled out a clay pipe and set about filling it. Tyrhos observed. Edér sparked and lit. Tyrhos whuffed at the puff of smoke.

“Don't think much of it, huh? Cough again if I should move.” He leaned back and petted the animal's neck with his free hand. Tyrhos licked his hand and fell still. “Stars, I can't remember a night this nice in a long time.” He laughed, and things came loose and eased free in laughing. “No one listening but a very good dog, and one clear road ahead. I missed that.”

The idle buzz filled in over the huntress's distant laughter and the wizard’s henpecked objections. He relaxed. “So did you decide I was acceptable before or after I stabbed your lady friend's enemies? You don't have to answer that. To be honest, I'm not crazy about picking up with total strangers. But…it was time to leave, and your friend takes good care of you. Maybe that's a character reference. You two…you’re not beaten the way Gilded Vale's become. Maybe I'm happy you're leaving before it rubs off on you.” Tyrhos was staring at the fire, but every time Edér paused the wolf's ears swiveled toward him as if straining to continue. “Wish I had a treat for you, boy. Maybe your friend's snares tomorrow. I'll say this, she's not afraid of dark places. Maybe that's the kind of settler this place needs.” He twisted to ruffle Tyrhos’s ears. The wolf yawned and grabbed Edér's hand in his considerable jaws. “What, now you don't want me using that?” Edér knew a play bite when he felt it, and he held perfectly still until Tyrhos released. The wolf yawned and relaxed again.

It hurt, a little bit. Not the play bite. Edér’s last hound was a solid two years dead and he'd never nurtured a replacement. That loss was just all mixed up with Gilded Vale's troubles. Maybe getting out was the only way of tipping the scales toward life again.

There was a way out now. With a huge, fierce fellow traveler who was a good listener. Edér was willing to give this a shot. He had made one friend already, and Vailond, well, he hadn't seen her contradict her wolf yet. She could become a friend. The road ahead was no war, and the people around him no fanatics. Slightly off their rockers, but in this world, who wasn't?

Tyrhos curled around him against the light breeze, all fur and comfortable breaths. Yes. He hadn’t seen a night this nice in a long time.


	7. That’s When They Learned (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edér and Aloth hear about their new companion.

The voices were maddening, but it was the faces that really got to Vailond. She floated nowhere, and faces were all around her. Angry, smiling, weeping, living out entire lifetimes in the time it took her eyes to scan their features. Souls all around her, forever and always.

“Vailond, wake up! Wake up!” The voice was real on a level unlike the babble in her heart. She opened her eyes.

Edér was there, squeezing her upper arms. Vailond squirmed and whimpered.

He loosened his grip. “Sorry. You were shaking, muttering. For minutes now. I was about to bring out a bucket of cold water.”

“No,” she said. Then she would be wet, chilled, and haunted, instead of just haunted. “I’m all right. I’m all right.”

“Circles under your eyes say otherwise,” he judged.

Vailond kept studying him, trying to make him make sense. His face was not in the memories that roiled her mind. His voice had no connection to the cries, the screams, the terrible laughter that melded upon one another where she couldn’t stop hearing them. She opened her mouth, but she could not channel the words, and she had none of her own.

“You don’t look too good,” Edér said, as if that meant something. “Look, you might want to try to sleep again.”

The first thing he’d said that made any sense. “No,” she said. “Gods, no.”

He frowned as if he was puzzling through something and not thrilled with it. “Is this something we need to know about?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Is Aloth up?”

“Yes,” said Aloth from his bedroll. He sat up. “Your awakening wasn’t quiet. Nor brief.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just, it happened only two days ago. I’m a Watcher.”

The predawn had precious little light, but lots of silence.

“You mean, with souls?” said Edér.

Aloth licked his lips. “That’s why you wanted an animancer. You’re going to need far, far more than a village wise man.”

Edér nodded. “But that’s why you started gaping at the dead dwarf. Or whichever particular dead person you were gaping at. You saw something.”

“And I see it in my sleep.” So she’d said it. Stop, stop, minimize. “I’ll try not to bother you again.”

“I’m afraid,” said Aloth, “that choice may not be yours.”

“Don’t get too encouraging, she might get ideas,” said Edér. “Just try to rest. Remember what I said about that cold water.” He returned to his bedroll. Atleia would bet he was out inside of ten seconds.

She walked down to the brook and found a rabbit in one of her snares, trapped, struggling. She killed it and carried it back to camp. The fire was nearly dead and there was no reason to stoke it up again. Still, Vailond found a branch and started prodding. The sparks looked like the inside of her mind, restless, chaotic, too hot to touch. She waited for the sun, and knew that it wouldn’t burn away their faces.


	8. A Priest and a Judge (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond and the party meet Durance.

Vailond understood what shrines were for. They were a step closer to the gods, a place of listening. Hadn’t she dedicated offerings to Galawain, out there in the distant places? Thus, the ragged priest at the roadside shrine of Magran did not surprise her.

Well, he kind of did, every time he opened his mouth.

Durance invited himself to her group. He claimed that he had seen her in the flames, whatever that meant. Magranites were an odd bunch, and this one wasn’t the best-looking she’d seen. She listened to his rant about whore goddesses and being interested in her and not her companions – creepy much? – and she was starting to drift off to more important concerns when he said it.

“Watcher.”

Vailond stiffened. “How do you know what I am?”

“Hanging a title on a person won’t change her nature. But you, your only light on this day is Watcher, Watcher. Yes, I know your clarity and your curse.”

“But what does it mean? How do I stop being a Watcher?”

Durance stared at her as if trying to decide something. Finally he laughed, a throaty, raucous laugh that scared away the birds. “Shall we see how long you can refuse to walk the road your feet have taken you to?”

“Please. You recognized me. You must know something.”

“I do not catalog souls, little Watcher, to say that this one belongs outside the scary box and thus are all fates laid out and pinned in place. I do not catalog souls, I test them.”

She glared. If this was his way of convincing her to bring him along…“You’re a shit salesman.”

His thin lips wriggled. “But will you have me?”

She had a feeling like he wasn’t asking at all. She’d known men who wouldn’t take no for an answer. She’d stabbed a couple of them. Now, this big ugly man, smelly, in scorched robes, with a staff that could double for a…

He knew about souls, and he had some god’s favor. Who else would write the shifting symbols on the instrument, who else would show him her face? If Edér could manage physical threats and Aloth could ward against the arcane, maybe she needed someone who had the attention of a god.

“Keep up,” she creaked.

His smile was terrifically ugly. “Let us see what you are made of.”


	9. Not Legally Required: A Request (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edér asks about Lord Raedric before they leave the countryside.

The land was level and sparsely forested. Good for travel without being seen from a distance. The roads here were all trampled grass with the occasional sunk wheel rut. It was notable when they reached a weathered waist-high signpost at a split in the road. If the sign had ever held text, it had lost it a long time ago.

“There we are,” said Edér. “Unless I got turned around, Caed Nua’s due east, no more than this afternoon and tomorrow’s walking.”

“Great,” said Vailond, and walked.

“There’s…one more thing,” he said.

“Hm?” She didn’t slow.

“You were real helpful in Eothas’ temple,” he said. “I’m grateful.”

She turned, suspicious. “But?”

“It’s not like that. Just…Raedric’s been killing my hometown one by one, and I have a feeling having a Hollowborn child won’t make him any friendlier. I know you want to talk about being a Watcher, and frankly, I’d like some of that Watcher talk too. But if we get the spare time, I wondered whether we couldn’t pay Raedric a visit. Talk some sense into him.” His hand was moving toward his sword. She tried to decide whether he was making a naked threat, and realized that she didn’t want to believe he was that stupid. “Might spare us all more blood.”

“You think they’d stop hanging people?”

“Well, they might keep doing it, but it wouldn’t be legally required. That’s something, right?”

Durance rolled his eyes. “Let the dead town finish its throes without you.”

Saving people from themselves was exactly the kind of thing Vailond loved not doing. On the other hand, this was more saving them from an insane thayn. “Aloth?” she said.

“I wasn’t in Gilded Vale much longer than you,” he said thoughtfully, “but it was enough to see how defeated the populace was. I met a man in town, Kolsc, of level temperament” (and Vailond suspected that this was high praise) “who seemed to have a plan but not enough people to pull it off. Whether he would be better or worse…”

“Orderingtheexecutionsofmourningmothers,” Edér coughed, and cleared his throat. “Some people might appreciate a regime change. Maybe we could go provide one, or turn the current one back from where it’s gone.” He looked at her and sighed. “I understand if you want to push through. But he’s not far, and if Maerwald is there now he’ll be there tomorrow.”

Another night’s sleep, or loss thereof. She thought of the bells all down the countryside, and the stink of fear around the hanging tree. A hanging tree personally ordered by that one man. They weren’t even returned to the earth. She killed things for a living and she wasn’t that wasteful. “Fine.” Off to kill a thayn…hadn’t she fantasized about it whilst getting into trouble in a lord’s forbidden woods? “Let’s go.”


	10. A Barren Land (Edér)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party tries to turn the tide in Raedric's Hold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw murder and infanticide. Actually, I don’t know whether it’s necessary to call out murder on an RPG playthrough, but this one’s of an innocent noncombatant.

Afternoon was running out. Edér stayed at Vailond’s shoulder as they walked the well-traveled cobbled road toward the keep. Durance and Aloth trailed. Aloth was handy against oozes; Durance was anyone’s guess.

“Given that he has ordered the executions of newborns…are we really trying the front entrance?” said Aloth.

“I’m not here to assassinate anyone,” said Edér. “Much. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

The guards on the near side of the moat grumbled, but Vailond improvised something about “materials” for Raedric’s animancer. It turned out he had one and the guards would be happy to not think about whatever materials she was gathering. In fact, they looked at the trailing party members with pity. People could get used to anything given time and fear. And they sent the party in to meet the steward.

Raedric’s keep was a grim place, built well and fitted for endurance, not charm. It was ragged around the edges, some tapestries stained, some rushes on the floor gone filthy and unchanged. Maybe some servants had left. Leaving was better than dying.

The steward was a tall, lean man who looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. He greeted them in a shaky voice and apologized for the state of the hold.

“Listen, while we’re here, I was hoping to have a talk with the Lord,” said Edér. “Can you arrange that?”

The steward picked at his wrist but stared straight at Edér. “Y-you don’t want to…it’s best if you just…please, what are you going to say?”

“I was thinking about ‘Stop killing babies,’” Vailond said levelly. She tossed her red hair from her face and stilled. It was impossible to read emotion in her face or voice. “Is he still on about that?”

The steward looked around and drew them into an armory. This room, at least, was well maintained. “It’s not just babies. He’s trying to burn out Eothasians when we don’t have any left. H-he, h-he…”

“Don’t be afraid,” said Aloth. His quiet manner was perfect. “Stay calm and tell us what we need to know before we speak with your master.”

“Oh, gods,” said the guard. “When his child came Hollowborn, he…he said it was judgment, and just. Then he took a dagger, and he…and no one _stopped_ him…his wife as well. She’d never had an unworthy moment in her life, and he just killed her like an animal.”

Durance made a noise in his throat. “It gave him something to do when flogging a dead god failed.”

“Wish we’d come earlier,” growled Edér. “Don’t know what we could have done differently, but…I wish we had.”

“I can get you to his main hall, but he’ll be well guarded,” said the steward. A little color was returning to his face. “If you could get him to recant…but you won’t. Please, please.”

“Please what?” said Vailond.

“Remember his child. Don’t remember it was Hollowborn. Remember…it was a boy. A beautiful boy.” It seemed like he’d been aching to say that to somebody.

And nobody around here was listening.

Edér found himself looking at Vailond, and she looked back, alert, guarded. “Just stay out of the way,” she said to the steward.

The man did announce them as best he could. Raedric, bulky, armored, sat on a red throne. Priests, mages, and plain armed guards surrounded him. Their best bet was to shoot him from the doorway and get out. But his visor was up, and maybe talking had to happen first.

Edér took the lead. It was his town.

“Who is this?” Raedric said sharply. “I didn’t call for any more doctors.”

“And I’m not one,” said Edér. “Raedric. We’ve never had words. Oh, I’ve seen you, riding through Gilded Vale, cleaner than anything in it…and I’ve seen you reading your own proclamations. About Waidwen. About Eothas. About children you never even met, and your idea of their just deserts. It’s to your credit you announced it all yourself, even when it was completely insane.

“But you’ve gone too far.”

Raedric had taken this with a sneer. “Did my cousin sent you? Kolsc was never contented with his share of the inheritance…so he sends ruffians to remove his rival.”

Edér hesitated. “He coulda sent ruffians to remove the guy killing babies,” said Vailond. “Your wife? Your son?”

Raedric’s jaw tightened. “Their sentence was just.”

But from there they had nowhere to go. Raedric regretted nothing, apologized for nothing. Even as they traded words Edér decided which person he would subdue first. He didn’t know the first thing about his companions in such a fight. Vailond probably knew nothing about human combatants, Durance might decide his goddess had use for those combatants, and Aloth probably thought a combatant was a kind of fish. He couldn’t count on them. So…Raedric as human shield? Tempting.

The conversation got quiet. Nobody had any justifications left.

“Tyrhos?” said Vailond. The wolf blinked.

She pointed at the cleric. “Down.”

The battlefield erupted in weapons. Edér stalked toward Raedric and seized his armored shoulder, trying to turn him around. Without any evident effort Raedric spun and brought his short sword out to thrust against Edér’s shield.

This was not supposed to be a duel. Edér kept his shield up and took advantage of his longer blade. One hard hit knocked his opponent's visor off. “Aloth,” he said through the disturbing crackle of magic and the repeated clang of metal on metal. “Take cover.”

Vailond had run to the shelter of Raedric’s throne and was shooting. Tyrhos was savaging anything that got close to her. Already two men on the ground were scrambling free, weapons dropped. Durance was beating Raedric’s mage as if expecting candy to come out. It was anyone’s guess whether he would grant mercy.

But Raedric went down. Edér gave him a moment’s more consideration. He couldn’t bring back the villagers, the families, the children. But he could break this maniac’s hold over the survivors.

He made it quick. Raedric had been right about one thing: some deaths were just. "For Eothas," he said quietly.

He looked around again. Aloth was overseeing a double row of disarmed, bloodied people. Durance was closing the eyes of a dead man. And Vailond…

Tyrhos hurled himself over her where she’d fallen and snarled at her allies. His hackles were up and his eyes gleamed red.

“Whoa,” said Edér. “Easy, Tyrhos.” He tried a tiny step. “I'm here to help.”

Vailond wasn't moving. Tyrhos snapped at Edér's nearest foot.

“Durance? Any clever ideas?”

“None you want to hear about,” said Durance with his strange gravelly laughter. “Here, wolf. Every animal is but a loss of standards away from the wild. Come, wolf. I have business with your mistress.” He drew one arm aside.

Tyrhos followed it with his nose, then stalked back to stand over the wounded elf. She was leaking blood.

Edér wasn't much for leaving a needful thing undone. He stepped forward once more. “I ain't gonna hurt her. I ain't ever gonna hurt her.”

“Loyalty to a dead thing serves no one,” said Durance. “Come now, your mistress needs a guide to the living before she sinks to the guide of the dead.”

Vailond stirred and moaned. Tyrhos turned to nose her rumpled hair. Edér darted in, and just as Tyrhos was about to snap Vailond touched the back of his paw. Then she went limp.

Tyrhos let them in after that.

Edér kept her head still. Her scalp was hot and sticky. “She's wounded here,” he said.

Durance knelt beside him and bared her wrist, her pale stomach. “This one won't go quietly.”

“This one won’t go at all.” He cradled her head. The entire story of the purges had been death and he wasn’t going to let the next one go. Not after she’d come here to set things right. He'd watched too many people die.

And Tyrhos was afraid. He hated animals being afraid.

Durance growled and his fingernails over their black crusts took up an eerie blue light. Some people, when they called their gods, the gods answered. The light washed along Vailond's body, slid up her neck, lit the shadows of her clothes.

Edér cleared his throat. This was getting uncomfortable.

Durance spoke a word that wasn't from any language and leaned back. “The path is clear, if she notices it. She is not likely to die.”

“That’s it?” said Edér. “She’s not _likely_?”

“A great improvement from when she fell there. Perhaps you could do better with that wooden slab of yours?”

“Vailond? Vailond.” Tyrhos nosed Vailond's face, cast the others a deeply suspicious look, and started a slow circle around the scene, watching for enemies.

Vailond groaned before she moved. Her eyes opened, green-gray, stony. “Did we win?” she said.

“If you said—” Durance started.

“We won,” said Edér, opting not to continue his exploration of Durance’s bedside manner. “You did good.”

“Tyrhos?” The wolf was there in an instant. “Oh, Tyrhos. You hurt? You ready?” The wolf jumped and shook himself nose to tail, then started licking her cheeks. Her expression blossomed, all pink cheeks and muddy green eyes. “Tut, tut. It’s all right now.” She tapped the top of his skull, then looked at Durance. “I owe you my life.”

“It is notoriously difficult to test a soul that has fled to the Wheel,” he said, gripping his runic staff. “You’re not finished.”

“Yes, thank you for making that as far from comforting as possible.” She got up on hands and knees, seemed to wriggle a little, and got to her feet. “Still, I can’t argue with the craftsmanship. I've been better, but I can walk.” She turned to Edér. “I think I made him mad.”

“He deserved it.”

“Do we need to spread the word in Gilded Vale?”

“That word will make it without us,” said Edér. “I’m more curious about Maerwald, to be honest. And…” he looked around, unsmiling. The dead, the prisoners, the white-faced steward. “I’m a little tired of this place.”


	11. Sing a Song (Vailond, Kana)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party meets Kana Rua and explores Caed Nua.

The aumaua named Kana was big and friendly, armed with an arquebus nearly as long as he was tall, and, apparently, eager to explore the ancient fortress of Caed Nua in search of some kind of writing.

He wasn’t particularly warlike with the arquebus. At several moments he swung it for emphasis, but otherwise treated it like furniture as he greeted and chatted with Vailond.

He passed Tyrhos’s sniff test, anyway.

Caed Nua had walls, of a sort. If somebody had grown a hundred feet tall and stomped out Raedric’s keep for a good five minutes, it might look like this: broken curtain walls, rotted portcullises, ruined buildings for what purpose she couldn’t say. It was haunted by phantoms and shadows of unknown source…maybe they belonged there and she didn’t.

As she raised her bow, Kana behind her started booming a bass melody.

She fired at the whatever-plasm of the ghosts until everything was down. Then she rounded on Kana. “What was that?”

“A successful battle,” Kana said cheerfully.

“You sang.”

“I am a chanter. It’s my particular skill.”

She had heard of chanters, of course, but she’d never been four feet away from one when he went into action. “Do you know a lot of songs?”

“Oh, don’t tempt me, my friend. Yes. I have learned many songs in my travels.”

“What do they…do?”

“What don’t they do? Befuddle the senses of your enemies. Inspire you to precision or strength. Lull you to sleep in a place as wild as this. My people place chanters in high regard.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s…good, then.”

They crisscrossed the ruined expanse, dealing only with phantoms and a chill breeze. There was an adra formation surrounding one of the ruined buildings.

“Halt,” said Vailond. “Something’s wrong.”

“What is it?” said Aloth.

“Look at these pillars. They’re carved. All these ridges, whorls. Does anyone know what it means?”

“I’m not familiar with adra detail work, I’m afraid,” said Kana. “Something unique to Caed Nua, perhaps?”

“Fingerprints,” said Edér. “Look at ‘em. Four here, and one over there.”

“Not only did someone carve a giant hand, they made it realistic to the touch,” said Aloth. “Imagine the effort.”

“What should worry you is how far beneath this statue goes,” said Durance, smiling. “If this is but the tips of the hand…what mind slumbers beneath?”

And with that thought, they turned their steps to the forbidding black door of the keep.

*

Kana was beside himself with anticipation. Caed Nua, and on this expedition he would have help! The secrets beneath the legendary keep were practically in his grasp. From here, cultural relics to unite a people; from there, Rauatai, and a world of scholarship reclaimed from the dark.

The elven woman did not lead, as such. The human fighter seemed to. She just directed, quietly and imperiously. She would make a decisive lady of such a place. But it would take more than five kith to put Caed Nua back together. For today, with today’s resources, he wanted to get in and gone, nothing more. Well, and maybe get some rubbings of the major tablets. All right, perhaps some artifact exfiltration. The point was, today could be simple.

Now the fighter was pushing the creaking doors of the great hall. Kana hurried to take the other door. Between the two of them they got enough opening for the whole party to enter.

Sunlight foundered and died within two paces of the doors. Was Kana going to show off? Oh, a little bit. He hummed a few notes and sailed up into The Flames Rose Yet Did Not Devour. A golden light started at his lips and began to zigzag up in widening strokes to the center of the hall. A little virtuoso flourish – he had been doing this for a long time – flared the light to illuminate the hall end to end.

It was in a condition as bad as the outside. Fallen pillars, fallen rafters. Broken statues canting at odd angles. Maybe looters had come and gone, but the paramount impression was the carelessness of years of abandonment.

“Oh, well done,” murmured Aloth, following the light with his eyes.

“This woulda saved me a lot of tripping on the way to the outhouse,” Edér said thoughtfully.

“How many times has this place died the death of ignorance?” said the priest whose name he’d missed, who seemed to be on a slightly different plane from everyone else.

Vailond looked at Kana. “Neat,” she said levelly.

Something seemed to echo her, down from the end of the hall. Kana strode forth, scattering the others. There was something else to learn here, and he intended to find it.

But there was only a stone throne with a figure of a woman carved above it. “Halloo,” he said. “Lady Vailond, could you speak again?”

“Did you just call me a lady?” Vailond said, in the exact tone she’d said ‘Neat’.

“Hello,” said the throne in a soothing female voice with the accent of the Dyrwood. “Can you understand me?”

“My lady!” said Kana. “Fantastic! Are you imprisoned in this throne?”

“I never thought of it as imprisonment. I am here to see to the cares of Caed Nua.”

Delighted, he continued questioning. The Steward had been here through the tenures of several masters of Caed Nua, and had endured since then, watching her hall slide into ruin. It was a richly bittersweet story of devotion and—

“Do you know an animancer named Maerwald?” said Vailond.

“Ah, Watcher. Yes.” The answer, amid a lot of regret about abandonment, was that Maerwald was somewhere in the tunnels below the keep. Inside the Endless Paths of Od Nua, just imagine!

“We must go at once!” said Kana as the Steward fell silent. “I will lead the way myself with a song on my lips!”

“And die with a dagger between them,” grumbled the priest. Kana really must have heard his name.

Vailond patted her beautiful wolf. “So he’s just downstairs, right?”

“Well,” said Kana, “there’s down and there’s _down_ …”


	12. Voices, Voices, Voices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond reaches the only other Watcher she knows of, and has words with him.

They found Maerwald.

That would fill Vailond’s nightmares next to the Watcher dreams for a long, long time.

The old Watcher was gutted, practically empty, and yet hauled around by two additional voices that were not his own. Previous lives of his soul, awake in his body, and he was too old or too tired to fend them off. He whimpered about lead keys, a Queen that was, a place of defiance – riddles. Vailond asked him, over and over, how to stop being a Watcher. He told her she couldn’t. He rambled into other memories of his own soul, scattered through history, driving him mad in the present.

He tried to kill her and her companions, but it wasn’t much of a fight.

Vailond followed him to the floor and set her hand around his throat. “Tell me,” she said, “how I stop seeing.”

His eyes were big and watery, his cheeks trembling, his breath rank. “There is no way,” he said hollowly, staring up at her. “The eye once open can never close.”

“That’s. Not. True. _Tell_ me.”

“Find the Leaden Key…perhaps they know. Never far from the Queen.” He closed his eyes and Vailond realized, horribly, that he had been bleeding since she knocked him over, possibly before. He did not stir again.

Vailond stood and wiped her face with her cloak, hoping the tears didn’t show. “Crazy old man,” she said. “Fine. Defiance Bay. I’m going at first light. You people don’t have to.”

“If Maerwald couldn’t answer my question,” said Edér, “there’s city records that might. You’ll have me.”

“I find the company preferable to travels on my own,” said Aloth.

Durance rumbled a laugh.

“I had hoped to penetrate further into the Endless Paths,” said Kana. “Perhaps I can stay behind. I could even marshal some workers for the Steward to direct. Caed Nua could be a palace once more!”

Everyone looked at him.

“If we were so inclined,” he muttered.

“The Steward does talk like she wants a Watcher for Caed Nua,” said Edér. “But if you’d rather avoid it all, forward’s the only way to go.”


	13. Devotion and Song (Aloth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party discusses godly devotion.

Vailond had gone on an errand, leaving the accidental fellow-travelers together.

It was an accident, to Aloth. She had been in the right place, insofar as Gilded Vale could ever be called right, at the right time, insofar as these chaotic days could ever be called right. It wasn’t just that she had scared off the drunks he’d been menaced by. He had trouble expressing it except to say luck. He hated to rely on it, but he certainly wouldn’t turn it down.

The big aumaua was smiling affably. “A Watcher! Where did you meet her? Does she share her visions? Has she searched for lives in your own past?”

“No,” Aloth said loudly. He coughed. “No.”

“I wonder whether she would read me. I wonder if I was a woman in a past life. So many questions!”

“You could ask her,” said Aloth. That would be a fine diversion. Then, hopefully, “She would only do it if you ask.”

“She doesn't seem to enjoy the attention,” said Edér. “Anyway. I would call for pitching camp but we've got nothing to pitch.”

“I have my blanket,” said Aloth.

“You like being prepared, don't you.”

“An old habit.”

Durance snorted. “A wizard is always one distraction away from catastrophe. And so they fall. I need only remember one thing: the goddess.”

“The whore?” clarified Edér, quoting Durance from their first meeting. “So we're clear.”

“Who's a whore?” Kana said with polite interest.

“Magran,” said Aloth.

Durance leered. “Does that truth offend you?”

Edér stretched. That man was not small. “I'm not worried about me being the one to take offense. Women get prickly about that kind of language, that's all.”

“Her flames, her heat. She knows herself.”

“What about you, Aloth? Favorite god in mind?”

Aloth thought of temples he had been to, never by choice. Eothas's bank of immortal candles was probably the closest he'd ever been to divinity. “Aedyr's observance of the gods is…somewhat less intense,” he said. “We take it seriously but it rarely comes to blows. Wael is the lord of secrets and revelation.”

Edér gave him a grin. “Always thought a Wael worshipper would be more…wild.”

“Only intellectually, I fear.”

“Wael is worthy of devotion,” said Kana. “Perhaps I should make an offering. But my heart will always belong to Ondra.”

Edér nodded. “Well…we're going to the sea soon. The Bay, anyway.”

“An excellent point. Perhaps I should accompany the Watcher for a while.”

“Accompany me where?” said Vailond, having slipped this far down the hall in silence.

Kana beamed. “To Defiance Bay, and ever on!”

She nodded acceptance and unrolled her blanket. “Will you sing on the way?” Now there was a pleasant prospect. Kana had a professional voice.

Kana kept smiling. “Only given the barest excuse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like “even-tempered” and “professional” are notes of soaring praise in Aloth's voice.


	14. The Collapse (Aloth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caed Nua has some growing pains. The fix isn't perfect.

Aloth woke at the sound. It was a whisper, a hint of weight. The Watcher’s wolf. He stayed still, wondering whether the animal had come to judge him tonight. Vailond might be able to see souls but she managed to not ask a lot of questions of the living. Tyrhos had, if not insight, at least intuition, and Aloth had no way of knowing how he judged the world or the people in it.

In short, traveling with Vailond made Aloth anxious, but the Aedyran elf gave him such tantalizing glimpses of the familiar, of the life he might have had. Sure, she was a common criminal and he was from a respectable family that had provided him a first-rate education. Apart from that, through that, something about her made him think of roots.

Tyrhos started baying. It was a horrifying sound, deep as the deepest temple bell, broad as the beam of an ocean-going ship. He worked up to a long, terrible howl.

Aloth sat up. The great hall of Caed Nua was dark but for the jagged strip of sky in the partially collapsed roof. Somewhere high up, something shimmered.

More phantoms.

Tyrhos was baying furiously. Vailond was up, her hands settling on bow and arrow before blanket or cloak. Edér and Kana were scuttling free of bedding. Durance was studying his staff as if trying to read something from it. High, high above, there was a rattling and a crack.

“Run!” shouted Aloth, summoning a force shield. Just then, of course at the worst time, _she_ surged to the fore. “Ye’d best be moving any parts ye’re fond of,” she said in the hateful voice from his throat. Tyrhos turned and looked straight at them, snarling. Aloth fought his way back…too late. Great dark blocks of stone were showering from the broken roof. Fueled by fear, he lanced through the two pushing phantoms above and they dematerialized.

But his shield had come late.

He raised a bright silver light even as Kana summoned warm gold. The mix cast shadows of blue and orange.

Stones, mostly. Edér, no less imposing for being out of his armor, had his longsword and shield. Kana was croaking the last of his song. Durance was studying the sky. And Vailond…Vailond…

The stone was about twice the size of her torso, and her knee disappeared under it though there was no room between it and the floor. Beside her Tyrhos lay on his side, panting and moaning, with two smaller stones resting on his flank. A larger one lay just behind him. Their pain seemed to mirror one another.

“Tyrhos,” she said, forcing every word, “here. Come here. You’re all right, see, it missed you, you’re fine, you….”

“He’s going to die,” said Durance.

“Bullshit,” snapped Vailond. “You’re a healer. Heal him.”

“I can heal one of you,” blustered Durance. “Even whores have business hours.”

Vailond showed her teeth. “Don’t be stupid. Help him, before it’s too…just help him. I promise I’m here for the testing as soon as you’re all done sawing off this leg, now _help him_ , or I swear by your goddess’s tits I will die of spite.” She squeezed her eyes shut and let out a cry, thick, wrenching.

Edér was already at her side. “Kana,” he said, and Aloth hurried to offer his services as well. The three of them lifted the horrific piece of masonry to reveal a limb that didn’t used to bend that way. Aloth had studied little of anatomy. The training wasn’t necessary to perceive the problem.

“Tyrhos,” she said through gritted teeth. “Is it done?”

“Your wolf will only need a few days to run again,” said Durance, looking up. “Now, then. This will not be pleasant. Magran is better at growing than at tenderness.”

Vailond bit her lip. “Go on.”

The work of the gods is not the same as the work of arcana, and Aloth followed little of what Durance was doing. Vailond bit her lip harder with each touch, but the mad priest’s glow did envelop her damaged leg, and a silent, hard-breathing minute later, he leaned away. “You’ll walk again.”

“Remind me not to ask you to do this again,” she said hoarsely. “What about walking soon? Getting to Defiance Bay?”

“Woman, you’ll be fortunate to get back to bed in that condition. Rest. And reflect that if you have that much self-interest, you might consider adding enough to avoid the problem next time.”

She turned away from him. “Tyrhos. Here.” The wolf edged closer and licked her face. “Tut, tut. Good Tyrhos. You and me, we’ll live. That’s what we do. Oh.” She squeezed her eyes shut and touched her forehead to his nose. Aloth looked away. It seemed polite.

Edér was staring upwards. “There’s a strip here where nothing will fall on you. Just a thought. If anyone’s going back to sleep. Anyone?”

“Apparently,” growled Vailond, “I’m supposed to.” She limped toward the tiles Edér indicated, and Tyrhos limped at her side.

In the morning there would be recovery. Aloth dearly wished he could have obviated the need…but here they were. It was anyone’s guess what else Caed Nua would do in the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have mixed feelings about Caed Nua as a game element. It's a wonderful, rich, pleasantly optional side game, but it feels...weird?...to spend twenty in-game minutes there and then go off to Defiance Bay while legions of faceless laborers build it up for you. I wanted Vailond to have a little more connection than that.
> 
> I'm also a big believer in abilities not being perfect at restoring stuff. Some days, with luck, but not every time.


	15. So Are We Keeping the Keep? (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond gets a pep talk from Edér re: surprise landownership.

“I could certainly direct any workman who came, Watcher,” said the Steward.

“It really wouldn’t be any trouble,” said the Steward.

“Even day laborers could make a difference to the structure of the main hall,” said the Steward.

Vailond was bored out of her skull. She couldn’t read, so the mildewed libraries that kept Aloth and Kana riveted were useless. She couldn’t walk around on her injured leg, so she couldn’t work off excess energy. Instead she was on a rude cot next to a talking statue who was hell-bent on roping Vailond into the world of home decorating.

Vailond begged Edér and Edér got her a whetstone for her knife. It was the difference between sanity and madness.

“I don’t know that there are a lot of people in this area,” said Edér. “Maybe we could send to Defiance Bay for some.”

“With what coin?” said Vailond.

“Oh,” said the Steward. “We have some of that.”

“We do, do we?” Coin was nice. Coin bought her the things that kept her supplied and whole in the wilderness, plus luxuries like funnel cake. She liked coin.

“The vaults were not destroyed when the creatures beneath attacked. If you bring laborers, we can pay them.”

“There,” said Edér. “Easy as pie.”

“Are these vaults under another layer of ravening dungeon monsters?” said Vailond.

“Hardly any,” said the Steward.

“Hmph.”

Edér had a stubborn look about him. “Listen,” he said.

“What?”

“You don’t know my whole story. I don’t know yours. We don’t know hers. But it seems to me like you’ve made enemies, not by trying. A safe haven can’t be a bad thing. I would recommend a farm, which suits me, only that falls apart pretty quick in war time. You build this, you’ll have a place. And no Leaden Key will come close, not if you’re surrounded by people.”

“Are you volunteering to find me workers?”

“Walked into that one, didn’t I?” His smile warmed. “I have business in Defiance Bay that shouldn’t worry you. I’ll put out some feelers. That roof needs the attention.” He sobered. “Just so you don’t think I’m being weirdly friendly…I won’t forget what you did for Tyrhos.”

Because saving the gray wolf's life was more important than getting her leg perfect. “He’s my best friend.”

“A woman who’s good to her dog. Tells me something about you. I’m heading out. Should have a few masons in, oh, no time. Light be on you, lady Watcher.”

“I’m not a lady,” she snapped, but he just tossed a Dyrwoodan salute – the non-obscene one – and turned away.

“Steward?” said Vailond.

“Yes, Watcher?”

“Tell me about the country out there. Do you get deer here?”

“Oh! They breed on the leeward slope of the north ridge. Only the stags usually come as far as in sight of the fortress. I can tell you all about how the population’s been managed…or, er, not…”

Vailond listened. She was used to exploring new country herself, but if one thing was obvious, it was that people wanted to do details for her. It was wrong, like trying to work in two pairs of gloves, but she had a bad leg and the Steward talked like a nice person. She listened, and, carefully, she considered thinking about planning.


	16. Three Scholars in the Ruin (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 15: Vailond catches up with the people crowding Caed Nua's records.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I learned that Eoran elves live a long time! Vailond is an adult, probably in her seventies?

The keep of Caed Nua was a mess. Vailond tried to walk down its hall's length and back every few hours. The first time she made it three steps and then went back. That was saving some energy for getting to the privy beyond the nearest corner. Walking got better with time. In the meantime, Tyrhos brought her sticks to whittle. She made a lot of spear heads before she calmed down.

On the third day she made it to the little cloister off the far wall. Her scholars were all there, gathered around the one long table running between shelves.

All three looked up as Vailond raised her lamp. “Vailond!” said Kana, beaming. “Your leg?”

“You shouldn't be on your feet,” said Aloth.

“If you're so anxious to restore what you had,” said Durance, “I could shatter your leg again.”

Aloth put himself between Vailond and Durance, and looked shocked that he had done so. “That's not necessary,” he said weakly.

“It's all right,” she said. “Thank you. It's all right. Now. What are you learning from this little cell?”

“Benedictions and mistakes,” said Durance. “Sometimes both at once.”

“Enchantment instructions,” said Aloth. “I’ve already added to my grimoire.”

“Details,” said Kana. “Hints of the riches of knowledge below.”

“Mildew,” added Durance. “Rotting the gods’ secrets at the speed of Wael’s stare.”

“So…you like it.” That pleased her. “Can these be restored if we fix up the room?”

“Most will need to be recopied,” said Aloth. “I'm no stranger to the exercise…it's good for students.”

“Are you thinking of fixing up the room?” Kana said casually. “The Steward will do it if you ask.”

Caed Nua commanded forest enough even for her. And these people probably deserved a friendly place. And when she was finished being a Watcher she might still want the resources. This didn’t mean she was resigned to Watcherdom. It just meant she’d come into some unexpected property. “Yes,” she realized. “Yes, I am.”


	17. The First Word from Defiance Bay (is a No) (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edér brings laborers and news from Defiance Bay while Vailond convalesces.

“Lady Vailond.” The burly man bowed.

“Lady Vailond.” The burly man bowed.

“Lady Vailond.” The lanky man bowed. “I can pull my weight.”

Vailond leaned two feet to the right to see where Edér was stroking his upper lip, grinning. “What is this?” she said.

“A squad to restore the main hall,” he said. “Fresh from Defiance Bay.”

“‘ _Lady’_?” she said.

“Well, you do have a castle,” he said, grinning wider.

“Talk to the Steward,” she told the laborers.

It was a total of six aumaua and human men, all with small packs for belongings and what looked like large stomachs for food. Vailond saw them to the Steward’s presence and then went to join Edér.

“It’s good to have you back,” she said. “For some reason.”

He was going to hurt himself if he smiled any more. People shouldn’t be that pleased with themselves. “Stop, I’m blushing.”

“Thank you. Once these men are done maybe nobody else will die from roof collapses.”

“Else? What happened while I was gone?”

“Nothing. I was the worst.”

“Well, that’s something.”

He had mentioned other business. He wasn’t bringing it up now. “Are you all right?”

“What, does that show?” His smile twitched. “Yeah. I got what I expected.”

“But you’re not happy.”

“‘Happy’ is a pretty broad term.”

“That doesn’t apply to you right now.”

Sometimes, when he looked away, it was like he was looking into a world she’d never seen in her life. “One little thing,” he said, casual as ever. “I came with you to look for Maerwald.”

Her stomach dropped. “And I completely forgot that. No. I’m sorry. It’s too late now to ask…”

“No, I got the answer. Part of it, anyway.”

“Tell me.”

He did. His hope was that a Watcher could read his soul, do something, to find out where his brother Woden had gone in those last days of the Saint’s War, and what side he’d fought for. There were no links left to that man or those days…soul reading would have to be it.

“But that’s not how it works, is it?” he said. “Silly of me. I guess the thought of it made me feel a certain way, and I didn’t want to lose that.”

“I don’t really know what Watchers can’t do,” she said. “Maybe I’ll find something.”

He smiled. “You don’t have to. When I went to Defiance Bay to scare up some laborers, I stopped by the city records. Figured if anybody had word on who served with Readceras or the Dyrwood, they would.”

“Good thinking. Did you get what you needed?”

“I got marched out, actually. Apparently there have been issues where somebody finds a name associated with Readceras and picks a fight. She said that if I were better known in the city she might give me the time of day.”

“That’s idiotic. You don’t pick fights even when people deserve them.”

“Tell her that.”

“I might.”

“Speaking of, how’s your leg?”

Vailond didn't answer right away. She looked down the length of the ruined hall, the rubble on the floor, the warped doors to rooms as yet unopened. It was a creepy place to be disabled in. All the more reason to get better. Show Durance a thing or two. She was still about three-quarters certain that he was willfully refusing to finish her healing. “I can get down the main hall and back. I think I’ll go farther tomorrow.”

“Good. You don’t strike me as the kind to do her governing from the throne.”

“There is no governing. There’s me becoming not-a-Watcher and keeping this place to myself.”

“Awful big room for one woman,” he drawled. “We rebuild this place well enough, it won’t matter how big the Leaden Key is, you can show them the gate.”

“Did you…no, you were busy.” It would be selfish to push. But. “Did you hear anything?”

“Some. Queen-That-Was is a title for the goddess Woedica. I heard a couple of descriptions of her temple – it isn’t active. Whether that’s ‘closed for the weekend’ inactive or ‘temple of Eothas’ inactive…I don’t know. That’s all I had time to come up with.”

Woedica. Bonds, vows, and vengeance. Only a total creep would start a cult for her. “Thank you.”

“Vailond?”

“What?”

He made a face. “Do you ever get a nickname or something? Vail?”

Well, people did keep insisting on talking to her. Why not double the efficiency? “If you want.”

“Okay. Vail. You know, one of these days I’ll see you smile at something other than Aloth’s discomfort.”

Vailond gave that a moment’s thought. “I smile at Tyrhos,” she said.

“That’s so. Never when you’re looking at me.”

Of all the random observations. She looked at him. She smiled, and really, it didn’t take effort. “Why would that make any difference to you?”

“I’m meddlesome,” he said, and his smile crinkled his eyes. “You know, the Steward is a little, uh. More mineral than animal. Do you really think she has a plan for feeding these folk?”

“We should probably work on that.”

“On it.”

“Oh, for – I can help too!”

His expression softened. “Never said you couldn’t. Tell me what I need to move, we’ll sort this out.”


	18. Sniff (A Meeting) (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond meets another traveler on an obscure quest.

The Steward cooed in distress when Vailond came jogging down the main hall, but she accepted, too, that the Watcher of Caed Nua was going to Defiance Bay. Even Kana agreed to come with Vailond for a while while the Steward managed the renewal of the keep. Vailond promised to return with Tyrhos at unscheduled times. The laborers took notice.

The roads south toward the bay were broad and smooth but quiet. They passed more than one scared-looking woman in small groups. Refugees from the purges, from the Legacy, from all the things Vailond didn’t fear because she was far enough away in her wilderness.

Edér relieved Vailond of one of the birds she’d snared and gave it to a woman alone for a meal. The woman cried. Vailond hurried away, but she set some extra snares each restless night after that. Giving away food was easy when you were good enough at gathering it.

“Defiance Bay’s going to be visible when we reach the top of that ridge,” said Edér. “It’s all right. Dyrwoodan to the bone.”

“More concentrated than the settlements of Rauatai,” said Kana. “I look forward to seeing it in more detail.”

Tyrhos went rigid.

Vailond did, too. “What is it?”

The gray wolf bounded, not down the path, but into the forest.

“If this is a squirrel,” she warned. He was usually good about that.

The forests around here had height and greenness like Aedyr. Different trees, and the underbrush was thinner, but it kept a sense of wilderness. Tyrhos padded over the layered leaves of last year and led her to a clearing. The others had stayed behind. Vailond wasn't sure whether they would be there when she returned.

She found a face-painted dwarf in furs sitting on a stump beside the single...er, second...most beautiful animal she had ever seen. It was a fox, only white, like a ghost from colder lands.

The dwarf looked up. “Oh.”

Tyrhos charged the smaller animal, then sniffed below the animal's tail. The fox sniffed in turn. Tyrhos capered and crouched down, eyes fixed on the black-eyed fox. The fox yipped and returned to his ranger's side.

“Well,” said the ranger with a smile in her voice. “Now that the pleasantries are out of the way.”

Vairond gave her name. “This is Tyrhos.”

“Sagani. And Itumaak.”

Vailond looked at the ranger’s furs, her bundle of supplies, her warmly lined clothes. “You're far from home.”

“With that accent, so are you.” She smiled as if to herself. “I have a reason.”

Her stillness by the road had been only a pause. She was seeking a man of her village, Persoq, reborn, and she had an adra figurine as her only clue in tracking him. It sounded like a crazy task in the width of the world, but…well, Vailond had hunted strange game before. And, while Vailond had few opinions on company, she did kind of like the idea of another woman. Plus a friend for Tyrhos.

“If you're searching near Defiance Bay, perhaps we could help one another.” She really meant it.

Sagani sized her up. “Company would be nice,” she judged. “And Itumaak likes your…Tyrhos? Strong name.”

“Strong animal.”

Sagani smiled. “Good choice.”

The group had scattered over a matter of twenty yards or so, each lost in busywork or thought. They rallied around Vailond and made introductions, except Durance, who harrumphed. Then, once more, the group got moving.

Aloth came to Vailond's side. “The hunter you wanted,” said Aloth.

“Yep.” Sagani was a tracker. She probably had every skill Vailond valued.

“I'll understand if you want to go at speed.”

“On this leg? Not hardly.” She waited, because his tension was strange. “Do you want to go faster? Or just…elsewhere?”

“No.” When he wasn’t nervous he was quietly assured, like there was a will under his words that he’d spent a long time tuning.

“Oh,” she said. “Good.”

“I pray I’ll be of some use in navigating the city. I know the manners if not the map.”

“Yes,” she said. “Useful.” That wasn’t exactly what she wanted to say, but it summarized the facts well enough.

She checked on people, one by one, as they walked. Morale was reasonable. Everyone saw something they wanted just ahead. It wasn’t like bedding down in swamps or evading landowners’ dogs or having her furs stolen while she slept or getting described to the local police and having to leave that town forever. She found herself wishing a little bit that this crowd would have reason to stay together a little longer.

She knew nothing of Defiance Bay, but maybe she wouldn’t see it alone.


	19. The Sight of Defiance Bay (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond, Edér, Aloth, Durance, and Sagani reach the city and call a halt.

Edér chewed the straw in his mouth thoughtfully. “Defiance Bay,” he said. “Looks bigger in person.”

“We’ll have answers there,” prayed Vailond, looking down to the lumps and lumps of buildings and chimney smoke. “Maybe we can both get ghosts off our backs.”

“Hear, hear,” said Aloth, for reasons no one could immediately place.

“Biggest place I’ve seen in a while,” said Sagani. “A real bed will be nice.” Itumaak yipped quietly. That animal was growing on Vailond by the minute.

“An entire frontier wrapped into one city,” said Kana. “Oh, the archives there must be a wonder.”

“Glory today,” scoffed Durance. “The next god come through may knock it down again.”

“They don’t come around all that often,” said Edér. “And we know how to discourage ‘em.” Casual, but proud, like usual.

Tyrhos backed up beside Vailond and nuzzled her hand. She scratched his ears. “It’s a good place,” she said. “You’ll be well fed.” Fresh kills had to be available somewhere in all that. Cities had their own problems, but she hoped that Tyrhos would present direct solutions to them.

The traffic into the city was busy, a lot of wagons, a lot more walkers. Vailond knew she was far from her territory. She made straight for one of the city guards at the gate.

“Hail, traveler,” said the big man. His armor shone like nobody’d ever worn it before. “Do you need assistance?”

Oh, more than he knew. “I’m looking for a place to rest before it gets dark. Any recommendations?”

He pointed through the gate. “The Fox and Goose is straight that way. Tell them Peddle sent you.”

“Thank you.” He just touched his helmet and returned his attention to the crowd.

“That’s still running?” said Edér. “They must’ve hired a more honest cook.”

The Fox and Goose was a three-story stone building, one of many around the region of Copperlane. Vailond first saw to it that Tyrhos had space in the stables, and tolerable food. Then she joined the others inside.

They had taken a round table. Itumaak was snuffling around the chairs. Kana looked ready to feed him. Sagani seemed to be monitoring the situation closely.

“That’s all for now,” Vailond told the table. “Let’s pack it in.”

She sensed the confusion before anyone said anything. Kana was the one who spoke. “It’s over an hour before sunset.”

“Oh.” She touched her temples. She was just so tired. “Of course,” she said miserably. “Why don’t you track down Woedica’s temple and I’ll join you in the morning.”

She went to the room indicated by the porter. It had two beds, one for her, one for Sagani. There was a fireplace, and enough room for Itumaak and Tyrhos to stay in front of it. Good. Good. She invited Tyrhos from the stables and none of the staff tried to argue with her.

Voices, faces. Sometimes it felt like time was rolling backwards, and in all that history she hadn’t thought to blink.


	20. Settling In at the Fox and Goose (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond makes herself comfortable at the inn. Edér asks about the future, and she thinks about an answer. Kana enjoys the food.

Vailond woke up like usual. It was still dark in her room. She went to the narrow oiled paper window and squinted. There were roofs between her and the east. Natural light might not come in for hours.

What a lousy place.

She went down the hall to get a basin of water from the pump she’d seen the night before, then washed off and dressed. She wandered the place until she found the kitchen, and after some talking and some pointed words about hungry wild animals she got a chicken carcass for Tyrhos. That done, she drifted to the common room.

Edér was the first down. Of course he was.

“What do you think so far?” he said with a friendly smile.

“It smells,” she said.

“Oh, you are not going to like Ondra’s Gift.”

“How are you doing?”

“Me?” He sounded surprised. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s my brother. It’s been nice to have something to work toward, I just have this feeling like I might not like what I find out.”

“It’s better than wondering.”

He smiled faintly. “You are always pointed at the most practical approach to something. You should sell compasses.”

“I’m not much of a businesswoman.”

“No. You’re something else.” He frowned at her then, staring. “You know you’re the only person who could’ve picked up a…party…like this.”

“They’ll get what they want and go,” she said. There was an annoying hitch in her shoulders and she tried to wriggle it away. “Lots of stuff in the city.”

“Hmm.” He took out his pipe, looked at it, looked around, and put it back. “Say you stop being a Watcher. Go back to Caed Nua, fix the place up. Think you’ll be seeing anyone?”

The thought startled her. “Will I?”

“Keep your kitchen stocked. Just a thought.”

Seeing them all, someplace safe, when the visions were gone. Tempting, and yet. “I will not have clean linen and silver tea sets.”

“So drag all the furniture aside and light a campfire. We're all used to it.”

She met his grin. “Hm. Do you want to look at the city archives again?”

“I don’t think Tyrhos would change anybody’s mind, though it might be very funny to see him try. Actually…” He chewed his lip. “Nah,” he concluded. “I don’t actually want to go to jail, with or without company.”

“All right. He stays on good behavior.”

They dripped into the common room one at a time: Aloth, quiet, taking his porridge with birdlike delicacy; Sagani, taking dried meat from her own supplies and holding very still as Tyrhos and Itumaak disagreed over who should feed from her hands (Tyrhos crouched in submission within seconds, watching the smaller animal with big blue eyes); Durance, grumbling, taking no food and tasting no drink; and Kana, radiant and late.

“We have the location of Woedica’s Temple,” he said cheerfully over a large tankard of mid-grade ale. “It’s in the First Fires district. Edér must have just missed it when he went to the city records. Do you think they have any eels left in the kitchen?”

“You _ate_ those?” said Vailond.

“Well, they’re not as good as you’d find in Rauatai, but the local preparation is an experience itself. I look forward to exploring Ondra’s Gift—after the archives—after the city records—after the Temple—just how long were you planning on staying here?”

Vailond put up her index finger. “Woedica.” A second. “Leaden Key.” A third. “Un-Watcher.” A fourth. “Anything you want.”

“That may be a simplification,” Aloth said quietly.

“I’m a simple person,” said Vailond. “That’s all there is to it.”


	21. A Hood Is Not a Muzzle (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond investigates the subbasement of the Queen-That-Was. Aloth produces a surprising conclusion.

Woedica’s temple had been round, penned in by a shrub garden. If it had more than two stones stacked on one another it would have been impressive.

Who the hell let their god’s place come to this? At least Eothas was possibly to blame for Waidwen’s Legacy. What excuse did Woedica’s people have?

There was no Leaden Key here. There was not even a building. Did Woedica, like Wael, whisper only under sworn secret? Or, like Rymrgand, did she not give her people any satisfaction in this life? Or was she just the kind of bitch Durance mumbled about?

“Does anyone linger here?” murmured Durance.

Vailond shook herself. She was a Watcher. Watch. She picked her way through the garden into the bare circle. A pile of wreckage marked a collapse or a fill.

A man stepped in beside her. “Can I help you?”

He was purple. She was getting to hate that color. “Where are the priests?” she said. “Where is the Key?”

“The docent with the key passed away some time ago. We leave the doors open for all of lawful disposition.”

“The Leaden Key. They live here.”

“I’m sorry? Nobody lives here. Some did, once, in the complex beneath. The city catacombs may still lead that way, but you don’t have to go there to make your obeisance.”

“Whatever that means, I’m not doing it yet. Thanks.” Vailond turned away.

She was being watched.

Tyrhos paced around her in a slow circle, growling at nothing. The others were staring at her.

“That never gets less weird,” said Edér.

“Did it last longer this time?” said Aloth, sounding anxious. “Can you pull back?”

“Sure I can,” said Vailond. “Any time I want.” She had no idea. Tyrhos came to her side, heavy and real.

“Can you describe what you saw?” said Kana. “Is it a person? A scene? A city? Do you hear as well as see? Do you smell?”

“Kana,” said Vailond.

“Yes?”

“I am not ever going into this.”

Kana looked sad. “That seems a loss for kith knowledge.”

“If kith want to be Watchers, be my guest. Don’t plan on much sleep.”

“I see.”

“Catacombs. Where would you put catacombs if you were Defiance Bay?”

“Don't ask city records, they might be protecting the local infrastructure.” Edér still looked relaxed, but he was watching her.

“City planning is a little bit of a hobby of mine,” said Aloth, “but I lack maps. I can tell you Copperlane is raised well above the water table.”

They found maps from a vendor near First Fires. They found the catacombs, a cold low tunnel that did have water in its deepest places, and Aloth guided them by a sense of direction that only Sagani and Edér seemed to share. Vailond’s heart seized when she heard the voices chanting near the basement to the ruined temple. Woedica people. Here. The Leaden Key.

Vailond raced ahead, light on her feet, with Tyrhos silent at her side. The room was big and round, lined with bones, and full of people in robes and hoods. Like the ones she had seen when her life was taken away. Like the ones who would help her get it back. She rocked back on her heels and tried to taste the words that would convince them to undo what had accidentally been done. She could promise to forget the other ritual. Truly, she could.

“Back, ye clod. Those hooded fyndes are nye to be trusted.”

That shriek was how Aloth announced himself at her side.

“Was that supposed to be helpful?” Sagani said mildly.

Tyrhos barked, not at the acolytes, but at Aloth. Then it all went to hell.


	22. Aloth’s Confession (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond discovers the nature of Aloth's secret, and is not amused.

“I don’t want to fight,” Vailond said desperately. Too late. Weapons were out.

The room was large and round and lined with skulls and other skeletal parts. The circle of hooded figures numbered seven, and they had clearly been doing something, and she couldn’t tell what. These ones did not surrender or accept being disarmed. These ones fought inexpertly and died to a man, battered down by Vailond’s allies.

She felt the purple again as the last man was falling. Vailond clawed at any awareness she could get. Hints of activity, other people’s recollections, wafting off of them in a final motion.

A tower over the sea, with a machine like the one that had cursed her. Graves. A place of misery and darkness, square rooms, the stale impression of despair.

She realized she was on her knees when the impact shuddered them. “No,” she said. “No, no, no.” She twisted to face Aloth. “How could you. How could you! They were my last chance! How are they ever going to help me if we _slaughtered_ them?”

“I’m sorry,” said Aloth. In the torchlight he looked like a damned spirit. “I truly am.”

“Sorry’s not enough. It’s not enough!” Tyrhos snarled. Vailond didn’t discourage him.

Aloth turned to the others. “Would you excuse us?”

“Well, since we ran out of enemies,” said Edér. “Don’t you two wander off, it’s not fair to pick more without us.”

“No,” rasped Vailond. “No, we won’t.”

The others filed out of the room.

“Aloth, the funny talk just stopped being endearing.”

“It was…?” said Aloth, and cleared his throat. “You must understand. I…I am an Awakened soul. Not like you, it’s only one prior face. Iselmyr. I had hoped that I could keep it to myself until we resolve the matter of your soul. And mine. I’m sorry. I’ve tried to learn to control Iselmyr. I am stronger with time…but so is she.”

“And that’s why you blew my only chance to talk to the only people who could help me.”

She saw the struggle on his face then. “She comes at times of risk, and jumps into them. I am truly sorry that it hurt you.”

“I saw something. I don’t know if it’s enough. Next time I don’t care if you have to walk around in a gag.”

“It won’t come to that.”

“You’re telling the others.” He flinched. “They deserve to know what they’re traveling with.”

“That is just,” he said quietly. “Can we…move on?”

Later, she would wonder why she never questioned moving on together. Still, it stung. “Can I get one Leaden Key member to talk? Would you be satisfied with that?”

“It depends,” he said hopelessly, “on what they know.”

“I need to clear my head. See you tomorrow morning, probably. _Tell them not to follow me._ ” She didn’t follow the others to seek the temple exit. She stalked back through the catacombs herself, with Tyrhos at her heels.


	23. Aloth Tells the Party (Aloth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party learns of Aloth's Awakening.

“Oh,” said Edér. “That’s…pretty much not at all what I thought you would say.”

The party had cleared the stairs to the ruined Temple and now stood in the moonlight, free of cultists, spirits, and Watchers. Vailond was gone. Aloth had found himself in the center of a circle, and the eyes on him burned. He didn’t court conflict and he hated that something in him did. Every single time, he wished she could be the one to soak the consequences, and every single time, she wasn’t.

“That’s unfortunate,” said Sagani.

“Do you think your experience as an Awakened soul is like the Watcher's?” said Kana, scrabbling for a writing implement.

“She controls her own body and voice throughout,” said Aloth. “I don’t.”

“When’s she getting back?” said Edér.

“Never, I hope.”

The corner of Edér’s mouth twitched down. “Vailond, I mean.”

“Ah. She said tomorrow.”

“She wears this company like an ill-fitting skin,” said Durance. “I must follow.”

And that man might do more than Aloth dared. “Why, exactly?” said Aloth.

“We do not always choose our trials,” said Durance, grinning unpleasantly. “Mine is to test her.”

“Let her devise an answer first,” said Aloth. “I didn’t, and she ran. Leave her be.”

Edér grinned at something distant. “Traveling the world, meeting fascinating Leaden Key cultists, and killing them. And I thought resettling would be boring.”

The man’s cordiality hid a mind Aloth would dearly like to not antagonize. Aloth picked at his sleeves. “I should go.”

“What, for good?” said Edér. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I am a liability.”

“On balance you’ve kept us alive. And Vailond likes you.”

“He’s not wrong,” said Sagani. “Every time you’re in the room she ups her game a little.”

Good. Comforting. “And Iselmyr just destroyed that. I should go. Just for some air.” He walked out, choking on his own weakness.

Iselmyr stirred and taunted in his mind. He thought, not for the first time, that it would be easier to just let her out. Stop taking responsibility. Let go.

But giving up was something he was too selfish to do.

Defiance Bay seethed. He worked to avoid colliding with people as he wandered from threshold to threshold. He liked the Dyrwood because it was distant from his past. Apparently he was accumulating another past. Did he have to run from that, too?

He wanted learned conversation, since he could not have it coarse. He wanted to understand more than he did. He wanted to forget that he had nearly gotten new friends killed. A woman, fearless, pragmatic, yet peaceful the moment defense prevailed. He wanted to forget the mix of raw loss and rage on her face, the way her last lead had been destroyed. By Iselmyr. By his tongue.

The only Leaden Key he knew of was totally ignorant of Watchers. There was nothing he could do about that.


	24. The Scattered Day (Edér)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edér spends a day alone by hunting for a weapon in Copperlane.

On the day alone, Edér walked through First Fires. Everything here was grand and clean: this place had forgotten war. There were veterans, among the Crucible Knights, among the Dozens, but somebody had been in after them to replant the gardens. He wanted to earn the city's regard. Maybe a good gardener could do that. He'd been a farmer, anyway.

Putting that in the past felt natural.

He walked outside the ducal estate. He was no more than two minutes away from the answers he needed about his brother…and could not persuade the clerk to give them to him. Aloth might have the wit to talk his way in, but Aloth had vanished. Durance might manage something with the priestess of Magran, only he wasn’t the diplomatic type.

Vailond…had no advantages, except Tyrhos. But he felt like she would manage something.

Defiance Bay. It had been a muster point for the Saint’s War, when Dyrwood marched against the invasion from Readceras. Edér, some months into the war, came there to enlist. He remembered only an impression of light and cobblestones and more people than he’d known in his life. Then he went to the front. Then he went to find word of his brother, but word never came back, except that he was dead.

Big enough to get lost in, Defiance Bay.

He turned back toward Copperlane. The atmosphere was a little less snooty there. He drifted, watching people. They looked about the same as people anywhere. Busy, sometimes loud. Worried. Since Waidwen’s Legacy you couldn’t find a place in the Dyrwood that wasn’t.

“Psst, mister! Over here!” It was a child. Eder stepped out of the flow of traffic to find himself craning over a grubby boy.

“Hello there,” said Edér. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Gordy,” he said, blunt and unselfconscious as only a kid could be. “Listen, I have a secret! Someplace where people stashed some special stuff.”

“That so? You going to take it?”

“Ugh, I don’t want it. I want something else. A real March steel dagger. The Crucible Knights are the only ones who get them. It’s the best steel around, except for Durgan steel, which doesn’t count because no one makes it any more.”

“Fine taste,” said Edér, smiling. The tyke understood more about weaponsmithing than some soldiers Edér had served with. “Is that what’s in your special place?”

“No. But I’ll tell you where the special place is if you get me the March steel dagger. There’s a big man in the marketplace selling one.”

“That so. I had a knife when I was your age. Teaches you what to stab and not to stab pretty fast. You going to be here a while?”

Gordy’s eyes were huge. He nodded.

Edér laughed and walked off. The marketplace wasn’t far. He wondered whether the knife was real March steel, and whether it was stolen. If the Crucible Knights still paid any attention to Abydon maybe Edér would feel bad about it, but they were mostly would-be nobles now, not craftsmen, and a nervy hustler deserved a little consideration.

Everyone in the marketplace directed him to the same man, an aumaua standing amid a battlefield’s worth of steel gear. Edér thought for a moment that he would like Vailond to be here, all directness and practicality. She would get the truth out by force of will. But the aumaua had sold the dagger recently to a party of adventurers. Edér raced to the expedition hall, where all kinds of adventurers gathered for their alternate acquisition techniques – er, paid professionalism. Nobody knew anything about a March steel dagger except a man who wanted to sell his for several thousand pands. “Good luck not drawing attention to that,” Edér said casually. The man looked worried.

Someone passed by yelling about ale. Edér kicked himself for not thinking of it. He headed back to the Goose and Fox, guessing, hoping. Here he found a table with five very cheerful-looking people.

“March steel? Sure, and at a bargain!” said one. “Look at this!” He waved it over his head. One of his companions grabbed his elbow and shoved it down.

“What’s your price?” said Edér.

“A hundred pands,” the restraining woman said.

Cheap, for March steel. Would the kid be disappointed if it was fake? Well, Edér had no proof. And it might be real, even if cheap. ‘The Crucible Knights will gut you for having this’ did wonders for purchase price.

“Fifty,” he said, “and, since it’s a great day, I forget you ever handled it.” He’d seen the move a thousand times, and he was in a mood for mischief.

The adventurers exchanged looks. “Done,” said the woman, and handed it over.

“It’s going to a good cause,” said Edér. The kid might be in a party as close-knit as this one day. After he’d grown up. He had time.

Edér went back to the marketplace for a leather sheath, with some proper snaps to keep the hilt in place. He returned to the shady alley where the boy had first found him. Gordy was there, whittling a stick against the cobblestones. He jumped up, eyes huge. “Did you get it?” he said.

Edér held it out, hilt first. It was very nearly the length of Gordy’s forearm. He gave him the short introduction to weapon handling and maintenance. “…And don’t ever cut toward yourself. You peeling something, or cutting wood? Cut away from yourself, if you’re opposed to the sight of your own blood.”

Gordy gave him a canny look. “You’re a real soldier, aren’t you?”

“I was.” Edér stepped back. “I was a kid first.”

“Wait! My secret!”

Edér laughed. “Keep it.” Kid might talk himself into more trouble by day’s end. It was a nice thought. “You be careful with that knife, though. Things get cut a lot easier than they heal.”

It occurred to him, as he walked away that, unfortunately, he was right.


	25. The Scattered Day (Sagani)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sagani reflects on her responsibility to track Persoq, and adapts to the party configuration.

On the day alone, Sagani wandered from neighborhood to neighborhood, observing hollows of squalor, bands of grandeur. In Brackenbury she slowed and took out the adra bear figurine that was her only clue to finding her countryman Persoq. Somewhere his soul had been reborn, and when Sagani got close enough, the figurine would tell her.

The Watcher had examined it on the road and had described a cliff over the ocean. Maybe not far from this place, but maybe…Sagani sighed. There were no guarantees.

At least the conversation had been good so far.

“What do you think, Itumaak? You think she’s going to help me once the Watcher thing is patched up?” She quieted. “You think she can?”

Itumaak yipped and headbutted Sagani’s side.

“Oh, easy for you to say, you’ve got Tyrhos under your paw.” Sagani grinned. “All right, forward.”

“Madam! Madam, your fine figurine! What price for the figurine?”

Sagani looked up sharply. A human man in flamboyant Vailian dress was standing before her, appraising her figurine, her fox, and her figure.

“It’s not for sale,” she said.

“Five hundred pands? Yes?”

“It’s not for sale.”

“Oh, a hard negotiato–ouch!”

Itumaak had barely nipped his sleeve. Love bites were worse.

“Not,” said Sagani, “for sale. And I’d hate to see blood on that nice fabric.” She stared up at him without blinking or smiling. She was just a dwarf, but she was no one’s inferior.

He backed down. “Naasitaq bitch,” he muttered, and hurried away.

“So did he mean you or me?” Sagani said conversationally. “Something tells me he’s not too clear on details of species.” She tucked the figurine away. “Come on. We might as well supply for—well, can you think of what? I’ll try.”


	26. The Scattered Day (Durance)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Durance considers a woman whose faith has become insufficient, and wonders.

Durance did not need temples. The fact of the gods was everywhere. It was just harder to hide in the high places.

On the day alone, the Ardent Fyrga stood in the Temple inside the Ducal Palace, a place of vanity and luxury. These people collected blessings with one hand and coins in the other and then asked why they could not balance. And here the priestess was, with a statue to the ceiling carrying the sacred brazier…and she could not light it.

“It’s a matter of faith,” said Fyrga. “Flint and tinder is not enough: I must kindle these with my belief. And yet…it seems that is not enough, of late.”

“Don’t explain the workings of faith to me,” said Durance. “The whore has withdrawn her charms. Even the wealthiest of Defiance Bay will not lure her back.”

She looked outraged. Anger and faith could vary together. “I don’t believe that. There must be a way.”

“Hmm.” This was not his mission, but something about it cried to him. Magran’s faithful had been abandoned since the Saint’s War. Since Magran’s Godhammer won it.

Durance was a priest. His abilities came from the gods, but they had become as impersonal as a wizard’s arcane machinations. He drew from power in the world. If Magran personally stamped it, she did so with impressive discretion. Who could he explain this to, but the Watcher he followed? What absolution could she offer?

Could his devotion reignite the sacred flame? Would Magran finally, finally answer when he called?

He thought of the power in him, the ministry that drove him. He looked at the statue, at the brazier it upheld. The beacon for a city crowded and profane, protected by a godhead and its Godhammer…but forsaken, too.

He didn’t want to know. He left her there, because some mourning could only be done alone.


	27. The Scattered Day (Kana)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kana Rua goes shopping in Defiance Bay.

On the day alone, Kana Rua strolled through the great marketplace of Copperlane. Here merchants came from all over Eora to meet the exports of Dyrwood and, through its sluggish veins, Readceras, Aedyr, and beyond.

Someone had set up a tent taller than most, made of thick orange fabric that cast a solid shadow. Someone was invested in avoiding direct sunlight. Kana hummed happily as he investigated.

The vendor had set up seven barrels of varying sizes, all gathered under the tent’s protection and in the relative shade. He had stood an easel among them and was busy unrolling what Kana instantly recognized was an arcane scroll, something in the family of fire.

“Excuse me,” said Kana, “but aren’t such scrolls usually concluded with a double line at the bottom corners?”

The vendor was an orlan, stout, furred an outrageous shade of green clothed by an equally outrageous shade of red. He showed a gold tooth when he smiled. “Ah, a fellow practitioner!”

“Oh, more of an admirer. My arcane studies took a different turn. Tell me, what scrolls do you have from the White That Wends?”

“A specialist, I see. Fortunately I obtained nearly a dozen archival-quality scrolls not two weeks ago. Kept in pristine condition, it was really a pleasure to take them on their way. You know what the single biggest export from away south is? Fireball. They can’t get enough of it.”

“Classic, yet none too daring,” said Kana, poking through the rolls in the keg the vendor had indicated. “What is – oh. What is this.” He drew out the tallest scroll. It was on thick parchment, black around the edges, and it even smelled different from the others.

“It’s not a scroll, as such,” said the vendor. “More of a historical curiosity. A folk tale, really quite unusual…”

“There are notes,” said Kana. “Not in the common mode, but I’m sure I could – but this is wonderful! An indigenous song under its unique notation system! This is simply amazing! If I could get my hands on a…” but getting to a musical instrument was secondary to getting the music…“yes, what a fantastic find! How much?”

The vendor’s gold tooth gleamed. “Well, then. It cost me dear, but for an aficionado like yourself I could cut to twelve hundred pands.”

Certain realities sought Kana’s attention. “Oh,” he said, crestfallen. Acting like this was the best thing he had seen all month probably wasn’t the best negotiation stance. “Perhaps if you’re here in a few days?” Vailond might have resources, and she seemed to like his singing. Vailond accepted him, in her own pragmatic way, and he already missed that.

“If I’m still here, it’ll be in this exact spot. Magran’s best to you, friend.”

Somewhat dispirited, he went about looking for Woedica experts. Chasing cults was free, more or less. There had to be more than one Leaden Key circle in these parts, if only he could find them.


	28. The Scattered Day (Aloth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloth, left to his own devices, get some cathartic writing done.

“I am writing this specifically to bother you,” wrote Aloth with his feather quill.

On the day alone, after hours of wandering through a city that should have felt like opportunity, he had taken a private desk in the city archives. Priests of Wael kept the grounds and the library. It was a place of stillness and of professional cordiality. It was a place where he could quietly lose his temper.

He wrote. “It’s maddening, isn’t it? Looking at these letters and knowing the words because I do. Did you think someone would force you into school after all this time?”

He wrote with a tilted cursive script, having practiced it to perfection under unyielding masters. He wanted to be writing spells or letters or, oh, anything but a duel with the virago who shared his body.

He felt her fighting him.

“Do you want me to get a position as a clerk? I can. Sit in one place. Write one contract. Indefinitely.” The periods were jabs. “Do you think I bore you in action? Imagine returning to my strengths and staying indoors.

“I might. Because you just sabotaged the best chance I had in the open. Because you harmed a woman who could…”

“Oh, it’s nye harrrd to conne what rouses ye about her,” Iselmyr whispered. Aloth bit his lip.

“I’d sooner jump off a cliff than bring you closer,” he wrote. “And she’s not my type.” He did have one. Educated, refined, a little delicate…a lady first. If only.

“Tip type a _top_ her,” Iselmyr lilted. In a moment of struggle she bounded outward and took control. He struggled in the dark, no longer present in his own body, just the mind. With her in full control he couldn't lift a finger. He struggled, politely at first. 

She had splashed the pen into the ink jar and started scribbling over his page, slashing letters, flooding white space, finally spilling the jar itself and brushing it to and fro with the quill. Aloth fought back against the wanton vandalism. He set aside the quill and capped the ink. Then he looked at the smeared paper.

Some letters had been untouched.

Aloth followed the trail. _I can help you_

“What does that mean?” he said, but Iselmyr had nothing more to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vandalism is a term named for the Vandals, an ancient and uncouth race left far in the past, notable now only for the representations of chaos.


	29. Everyone Gets the Hints (Sagani)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party is reunited and Vailond delivers the next clue to the Leaden Key's machinations.

Everyone came together after sunset. In hushed tones they talked about their days, what they’d seen, what places reminded them of Defiance Bay which did not belong to any of them. For Sagani it was like the arrival of a trader who brought new things to the village and started a festival air just by being there, the link to a wider world. For Edér it was like the plain sense of a mob on the edge, unmistakable, hard to steer from even if you wanted to…but surprisingly easy to live with. For Durance it was like the signs of war, memorial street names, arrogant pretenders to past glories. For Kana it was like the frank curiosity of a crowd, as easy and illuminating in Rauatai as here.

Durance betrayed a dark sense of humor that Sagani could only barely distinguish from the traces of his obsession. Edér was relaxed and wry, but he looked often at the door. Aloth came in late and would have passed by had Kana not physically steered him to the table and ordered him a drink. Poor fool. He must be thirsty enough for one, even if not two. Durance eyed him shrewdly and left.

If Sagani were to be strictly honest, it was Itumaak who noticed Vailond first. The fox pattered away from Sagani’s knees, dashed between tables, and fawned on the elf in the doorway. Tyrhos, giant in the dining room, lowered his nose to let Itumaak rest his head on it. Those two were getting along better than the kith.

“Kana,” she said, nudging the aumaua.

“Yes? —Oh, yes. I’m relieved.”

“You are?” said Edér. “What f—oh. Oh, good.”

Aloth made no sign of surprise, except to suddenly peer through the glacier of tension he’d carved.

Vailond’s rage was gone, leaving only her usual wary balance. She looked at them and veered off toward the stairs. Before Sagani could speak up the elf stopped, sighed, and turned.

“Hello, everyone,” she said. “You’re all…here. Except Durance. Are you…all right?”

She asked like a hunter asks another hunter who disappeared into a snowstorm or slid too fast into a crevasse. Like she wasn’t expecting an answer, but wanted one.

“Nothing bothering us here,” said Edér.

“It’s been a stimulating day!” said Kana.

Aloth didn’t say anything.

“Where did you leave off the hunt?” said Sagani. “Anything we can help run down?”

Vailond twitched a smile. “I’m still a Watcher.” She sounded tired, but she was certain, too. “If you want to help, I saw something we can try. I have two leads: a place of misery and madness, and a run-down tower over a cemetery with a machine. Like the one that started this. I never…ugh, I should draw it for you. Does anyone have paper?”

“I thought you’d never ask!” said Kana. Within seconds he had produced a roll of paper, a pen, and an ink bottle. He shoved them across the table. “Please, feel free.”

Vailond came to the table and unrolled the paper. “Hm,” she said. “It’s just like I saw before.” She drew a couple of lumpy oblongs, one atop another, and a longer oblong crowning all. “Belts of it spun, like running around the outside. Here, and here.” She drew horizontal lines. “It was mostly purple. Maybe people who study Engwithans will already recognize this.” She set the pen down. “I think both places are in Defiance Bay. I don’t understand just where or what yet. But tomorrow I’m going out there to find out.” She looked around the table, alert, unsmiling. “I am…glad, to see you again.” She went toward the kitchen.

Kana examined the paper. “Do you suppose it’s like the classical Engwithan engines in Eir Glanfath?”

“A worthy guess,” said Aloth. “If you’ll excuse me.”

He didn’t follow Vailond. Sagani couldn’t say where those to stood relative to one another. Iselmyr was surely still in disgrace.

Kana started copying Vailond's picture, humming all the while. Edér emptied a tankard and eyed the result. “Think that's going somewhere?”

“I think I am on the trail of another mystery,” said Kana. “The game is afoot!”

Edér fed Itumaak a scrap and smiled wryly. “All I'm saying is, if she's after a place of madness, she'll have to narrow it down.”


	30. Aloth’s Service (Edér)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edér hears plans that Vailond and Aloth are keeping to themselves.

The inn stairway was narrow. Edér’s tunic caught at the top railing and he stopped to tug.

Vailond’s voice sounded below him. He tensed, but her words were indistinct.

Aloth’s, on the other hand, carried clear. “You wanted to discuss something with me?”

“Hm.” Things were quiet. Edér thought that he shouldn’t be listening to this. But his two traveling companions had been mysteries since Gilded Vale, and somehow he thought he wouldn’t much like them keeping secrets from him. “Listen, if you want to make up for what happened…do you?”

“More than anything.”

“Listen. What’s happening to me…there’s no easy answer. I have to…I have to know that. Woedica’s not going to hand me a nice man who can un-Watcher me. I’ll find something, I will, but my life is going to be…in Caed Nua, or near it. Social, like you. Your world. And if that’s happening there’s something else I need.” Again, a pause. “I…don’t know how to say this right.”

“Take a breath. Whatever it is, we’ll manage it.”

“I know,” she said quickly. “Oh, I know.”

There was a moment, a whisper.

“You mean you’ve never—?” said Aloth, too loudly. “No, forgive me. I should not have sounded so surprised. Of course it would be my pleasure to help you begin.”

“Don’t noise this around.”

“Of course not. I understand. Vailond, I’m…pleased, that you came to me. That you thought—I can help you. You won’t regret it.”

“I don’t expect to. I can’t start today, but…”

“Soon,” Aloth urged.

She laughed a controlled, low laugh. “As soon as I can, Aloth. As soon as I can.”

They left then.

“I’ll be damned,” murmured Edér. He wouldn’t have placed her for a nobleman’s lay and he wouldn’t have placed him for the lover of a wild woman. Still, these were strange times, and really, she deserved what happiness she could take. She was being a lot nicer than anyone in her position should have to be.

Aloth and Vailond. Countrymen by birth and race, and something else by whatever passed for choice in this crazy world. He backed into the hallway and went on his way.


	31. The Road to Heritage Hill; The Nip (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kana reports on the search for Leaden Key activity on Heritage Hill. Edér faces the consequences of petting.

Kana smiled over his eggs and toast. “Your Engwithan machine is at the top of a tower in a district called Heritage Hill. It has been blocked off for several weeks now, and the guards don’t seem to have the details of why. Regardless, no one has been seen getting in or coming out ever since the lockdown. If there are people there, they must be starving. And if there aren’t…well. _Something_ walks there.”

Vailond looked at her toast.

She looked at Kana.

“When did you find all this out?” she said.

“Last night.”

“From who?”

“Oh, people here and there. The guards.”

“You just…went around talking to people?” said Vailond.

“Yes,” said Kana.

“And that works?” said Vailond.

“They don’t write songs about Dyrwoodan hospitality, but in my experience it merits at least a ditty.”

She pushed down her hope. Mostly. “This is…this is great. Maybe the Leaden Key can use the machine to undo what they did to me. They could be there right now.”

“There may be other dangers.”

Vailond bit her tongue. She had around her a handsome warrior who liked her wolf, a wizard bound by a conscience might yet redeem him, a fearless tracker who her wolf liked, a possible priest, and Kana, whose friendly intelligence might solve all.

“There may be other dangers,” she echoed. “I'm not afraid.”

“Ow,” Edér said quietly.

Vailond, startled, said “What happened?”

“It’s nothing,” he said. He had had one hand under the table this whole time. “I tried to pet Itumaak yesterday.”

“I didn’t stop him,” Sagani said with a smirk.

“He, uh, I don’t think he’s used to it.” Edér brought up his hand to show an angry red wound. “I mean, that’s his right…”

“Durance, you can help him,” said Vailond. That wound did look awful.

Durance gave a huge harrumph, and didn’t comment further.

“Does it hurt?” said Vailond.

“No. Not hardly. Some. No, not really. All the same, I think Tyrhos is more sociable.”

Vailond glared at him. “Can you fight?”

“No problems there, Vail. Promise.”

“All right. Heritage Hill.”

“Are you sure we can open fire in a city?” warned Sagani.

“I mentioned that only monsters walk there,” Kana said helpfully. “They must be removed, and you two are adept at removal.”

“Hey, I’m no furniture,” Edér said, sounding mildly annoyed.

“Oh, we all do our parts,” said Kana. “But our lady friends are fast on the draw.”

“And the bite,” said Edér. “No denying that.”


	32. Noticing A Farmer (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond takes a moment to recognize a budding feeling.

Vailond packed her things for the trip to Heritage Hill. Usually she would cache them, and come back days or weeks later once her hunting was done. Now she left them under the bed. The rules were different in an inn.

She thought about coming back to the Fox and Goose. How good it felt. How good it felt to see Edér smiling at her, to see Aloth relaxing, to see Kana flashing her the bright attention he usually gave to dead languages and song.

Edér, mostly. She wondered whether he could tell. She’d been told a few times that she didn’t do too well showing her feelings, and maybe that was smart. He didn’t have to know how much she thought about him, or how happy she was every time he chose a path beside her.

She felt, for reasons she could not fully justify, that if she saw his soul on a hunt in the wild she would let him live. He was a story, not a trophy. He was strong, and kind, and funny, and he could face cruel fates without enjoying them. He was nicer than she was.

She had to stop herself. They would be close soon. Life and death did that to a pair. Maybe even this one.


	33. ABC (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloth and Vailond consult over studies in the midst of everything.

Heritage Hill was a winding rise of tombs and houses that had once been grand. City guards opened the neighborhood's gates…and slammed them after Vailond's party got in.

“Not the most encouraging sign,” said Aloth. “Step carefully.”

“Stepping lively,” said Edér, raising his shield. Motion stirred in a dozen shadows.

There were two types of gray and awful. One was the skeletons, crawling out of tombs, racing around corners from the dark to the battle, fighting until no two limbs were left together. The other was worse. The other was flesh bodies, stinking, rotting, scrambling…weeping as they came. They drooled. They begged.

Their souls are bound to their own corpses,” said Durance. “Here is mischief for you.”

Little patches of grassbound stones. Tall vaults springing open. Bodies, raging and stilling. The way was slow, and the white fog made each new crossroads look strange, even if they’d been there twice before. Vailond started punching out pieces of fences at intersections, just to have something to mark the way.

“Burn this,” Vailond said to Aloth over another pile of the twice dead.

“Are you sure?” he said. “The smell may be…potent.”

“Burn it,” she said. Aloth nodded solemnly and blasted the three fallen wichts and skeleton. The smell was, in fact, foul beyond Vailond's experience. But the bodies stopped moving.

Vailond picked direction and pace. When they found a quiet avenue before a still white house, she realized that they would have to split out of earshot to cover the place.

“I’ll keep watch here,” said Vailond.

“I can stay with you,” said Aloth.

“Oh,” said Vailond. “All right.”

The others crept into the building. Vailond couldn’t hear a thing.

“Can I show you something?” said Aloth.

She looked around: two charnel heaps on the cobbles, black iron fences, white sky above. Tyrhos was pacing. She had not spoken with Aloth for more than ten minutes at a time since the discovery of Iselmyr. She hoped to any and all gods that he was not about to start apologizing again. “Yes,” she said.

Aloth looked worried. “Your habit of monosyllables is direct but not always clear.”

“What’s a monosyllable?”

“A word with one syllable.”

“What’s a syllable?”

“A single…beat, in a word.” He gestured as he spoke, seemingly trying to illustrate the details of language with his fingers. “‘Lure' is one syllable. ‘Failure’ is two. ‘Friend’ is one syllable. ‘Friendless’ is two.”

“Or ‘friendly.’”

His brow wrinkled up. “Yes. Just so.”

“Why don’t you like monosyllables?”

“Because they don’t tell me anything about what you’re thinking.”

“I hurt. I want to sleep. I might give up…but I won’t.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Can I show you something?” he said again.

“Do.”

He kneeled to the level of the cobbles and leaned over the black soil of a garden’s edge. “As promised. Every Aedyran word is spelled using twenty-six letters. Once you know the letters, you can make any word.”

“That doesn’t seem like very much.”

“It serves. We have an order to them, when we learn them.”

“The alphabet.”

“Yes.”

“I know most of it.”

“Good. It begins with A.” He drew two shapes in the dirt. “A is very common. It has several sounds. Aedyr and Wael, Vailian and Vailond. It is past, and race, and father.”

She knelt beside him. “All that for one letter?”

“Aedyran developed over a long time and took part from many languages. With time you’ll get a better sense of how to sound out. If you want something simpler, B just means B. Bored.”

“No,” she said softly. His pale eyes fixed on hers. “Broaden. Believe.”

He studied her eyes with the same intensity he gave his grimoires. “Befriend?”

She studied him back, his neat hair, his fair skin, his pale eyes, the tiredness that had not left him since Iselmyr’s introduction. “I understand,” she said.

“Truly?” he whispered.

Tyrhos bayed, the sound of a hunting beast on the trail. Vailond felt caught out in guilt. Both elves stood. Vailond readied an arrow.

This place was sick, and Vailond hadn't learned many remedies in her life. A wicht galloped toward them. She shot. Beside her Aloth whispered, and for reasons she did not understand and need not examine, she knew it was for her.


	34. The Rotten Place (Durance)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Durances aids the Watcher in her travel up the Engwithan tower at Heritage Hill.

Durance could tolerate Vailond’s sidetrack. Every action was ripe for evaluation, for judgment. Every one might validate his search, even though it was not Vailond’s answer he sought. It was the answer in the wake of a Watcher, not of her choices but of her identity’s ripples. It was the answer to the Godhammer, to the gods.

To Magran, who had closed her legs long before his tongue was tired.

Heritage Hill ran down to the sea in a ramp made wide and smooth for the tender feet of the run-down houses’ last scions. Here stood the tower crowned with the Engwithan machine. Durance would know it anywhere, and Kana cried out in delighted recognition. Distractions, these people she surrounded herself with, but she knew how to bend them to her defense, too. Uncouth yet canny: just the sort to sting the gods to reaction. He hoped.

The tower had a musty stench of disuse. “Has it withered so in two weeks?” mused Durance.

“Can’t be,” said Edér. “My room didn’t smell like this until months out.”

“You probably had fewer dead things in your room,” said Sagani, nocking and shooting into the darkness. A ghul croaked and fell.

Durance flared his staff, casting white light through the huge room. The undead: scarcely a problem for these weapons. His attention was for the base of the Engwithan tower.

A table hugged the rustling purple machine. Vailond approached it first and scanned the surface. Aloth hurried beside her and took a sheet of paper covered in dense lettering. “It’s a diary entry,” he said, scanning it. “A man frustrated by his inability to determine the machine’s purpose.” He locked eyes with Vailond as he tucked it away into his robe. “We can review later.”

Sparks leaping from elf to elf, from short and flame-haired to average and dark. A Watcher encompassed multitudes. She was not entitled to one more, yet here she was, claiming with her dark-fringed blue eyes.

So they rose through layers. The log entries came from a student and a master, two people frustrated by runes and struggling to appease a nameless sponsor. One thing became clear: the people who had studied this machine for weeks had never figured out what it did.

Only, something had. Something was using it. The hum in its core was unmistakable. Durance did not trust machinery, particularly from animancers as thorough as the Engwithans. Perhaps the day would close with destruction. He would not mourn.

The final staircase burst into light. It was an oppressive, diffuse fog, retreating but not comforting. And there was a man, his head lolling from one grayish shoulder to another. Another wicht.

This one more lucid than the rest. Aldhelm, author of the diaries, swayed beside the control to the tip of the spinning Engwithan machine.

“Fascinating! Marvelous!” said Kana. “What does it do?”

“I still don’t know,” moaned Aldhelm. “You should not be here. I have grown very hungry.”

“We’ve got ways around being snacked on,” Edér said levelly.

“Icantha, that bitch. She has studied the runes. She’ll know. She’ll know. She’s in the town below. She will have been…provisioned.”

“Are you saying you don’t understand how this machine works?” said Vailond. “Or what it does, or what to do and not to do around it?”

“Nothing,” said Aldhelm. “For weeks. Nothing!”

She shot him between the eyes.

Pragmatic. Durance harrumphed. Edér cocked an eyebrow without saying anything. Aldhelm dropped.

“Will Icantha know more?” said Kana.

“More than nothing?” said Vailond. “I hope so.”

“Very…direct,” Aloth said quietly. “But he hungered, and we cannot leave such things at our backs. Animancers’ lust for ‘knowledge’ got us into this trouble…we must get ourselves out.”

Was this an animancer’s work? Or an idiot’s? Not everyone knew how Engwithan machinery toyed with souls. Even Durance did not understand much. An animancer or an idiot. Aldhelm might have been either, or both.

“Stay here and stop anything that comes up,” said Vailond. “Tyrhos can stay with you.” Tyrhos whuffed and padded to sniff Aloth’s feet. He seemed satisfied with whatever he smelled. Aloth bit his lip. Then he reached out, cautiously. Tyrhos raised his muzzle and pushed his head up under Aloth’s palm. Vailond nearly hid her smile. Apparently the wolf had forgiven him. Tyrhos accepted Aloth’s ginger petting. Edér sidled over to help. Tyrhos squeezed his eyes shut and wriggled.

“I see you’re in good hands,” Vailond said evenly. “All right, non-dog people. There’s somebody who has studied the runes, alive in this town.”

“Or at least able to talk,” said Kana.

“Ah.” She looked at Aldhelm. “You’re right. That may not overlap.”


	35. Reading Something that Isn't There (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond receives the secret to the Engwithan machine, and must decide what to do with it. Her first choice is very simple.

The scholar named Icantha burned arrogance like living people burned torches against the night. She didn’t seem in danger of running out.

She was also a shambling fampyr, so there was that to consider. As soon as Vailond had her knowledge she intended to do away with her. She decided on that even before she realized Icantha had penned in living humans to give herself meals for weeks.

Practical. Vailond would never do it for herself if she became the hungering dead. For Tyrhos…well. If she and he were already dead, what did they have to lose? But no. It wouldn’t come to that.

Kana took unexpected lead in talking to the proud fampyr. He wore her down with questions about what good her knowledge would do if no one ever heard it. Sharing the secret of the runes would show everyone her skill and several other large words Vailond didn’t know. Kana teased a book from Icantha’s hands. Vailond opened it and rested a hand over one page.

And remembered.

“Yes,” she said. “I can read this.”

“Truly?” said Kana. “In so little time? There are scholars who would dearly wish to talk to you!”

“I have what we need here,” said Vailond. “There’s just one more thing.”

Itumaak darted to circle the undead scholar before she could raise an arm. Sagani sent an arrow, saving her companion the disgust of biting into the dead flesh. Icantha was sturdy, but she was sturdy in ragged strips by the time Durance stepped in and crushed her rotting skull in one huge staff-swing.

“Good,” said Vailond. “Now. She was keeping food. Look around.”

Durance made a beeline for a back door. “The smell of fear,” he said, “is universal…but rarely so thick.”

The smell was indescribable. Dead things, live things unwashed, urine, and more. But the five ragged people inside thanked Durance with raspy voices and scuttled into the light outside. Vailond didn’t react until they were gone.

Then, concentrating, she still didn’t react.

She realized in the first moment of motion that her heart was pounding and her head was light. She left her companions behind. She ran down to the beach and the entrance to the tower. She leaped up the staircases with the speed of falling. She burst out onto the bright mist of the tower’s top. Edér and Aloth and Tyrhos were there. She ran past them to the waist-high control panel where Aldhelm had died again.

She read the controls, skipping unfamiliar words, top to bottom.

There was nothing about Watchers.

Souls, storing, directing, other towers, things that didn’t matter. She read it again. There was nothing about Watchers.

“Aloth,” she said thickly. “Help me.”

“What can I do?” he said at her side.

“Explain the words I sound out. Tell me what means ‘Watcher.’” She started reading again. She didn’t have to struggle to sound out Aedyran equivalents to the words. A machine to store souls, to keep them trapped, or spin them out to nearby bodies, even the wrong bodies. But nothing about a Watcher.

They reached the end of the panel’s text. Vailond shook her head, hard. “No. It has to be here somewhere.” She darted to the machine itself and started tracing with her fingers, looking for lines of text. She found some. She read them with the bright clarity of having learned these letters, these combinations, these…these _nothing_ if they did her no good. Vailond read out loud, hoping Aloth would interrupt her, would tell her that she had found the right words, that they meant she wouldn’t be a Watcher anymore.

But he said nothing, except to define the terms she didn’t know.

“There has to be something,” she said hoarsely. “Somewhere. There has to be something.”

“This machine was never meant to enable the viewing of souls,” said Aloth. “The one that affected you…its magic must have been different. Shaped differently by the hooded figures you saw. They might not have used a machine like this at all.”

“They have to!” She rounded on him. “This has to be able to do it! Figure it out!”

“Enough of thy wittering, ye may as well suckle a rock.” Tyrhos growled. The conflict on Aloth’s face was so much more disturbing now that Vailond knew. But the bitch might be right.

“Vailond.” It was Kana, speaking more softly than usual. “Vailond, look at me.”

She did. His usual smile was gone. “There are no further runes here for you to read,” he said slowly. “There is a great body of knowledge you can add to now that you understand those runes…but if this machine were made to inflict or resolve your particular problem, you would have seen it by now.”

She snarled. He was right. Or maybe he was wrong, and the answer was right here, and she wasn’t allowed to see it. She bit back a sob and brought one hand to her mouth. The machine was storing souls, hundreds. It had been used to bind the dead to their bodies rather than letting them pass to the Wheel. It was horrible.

She could shut it down. Instead she set it whirling, separating the souls…racing beyond its own safeguards. Destroying itself. The spinning rings in the machine went faster, and faster, and faster. Something whined and crumbled within. Suddenly the lights that haunted the machine vanished. The rings cracked and stopped. Vailond made an experimental prod at the control panel. Nothing happened.

If she couldn’t have it, no one could.

She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and cast a nervous look at her companions. None of them said anything, and that’s how she liked it.


	36. Lacking in Utility (Aloth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloth wonders whether he's been made redundant, and gets an unexpected answer.

It was done, and the last of the lost souls trapped in the Engwithan machine had been destroyed. A small price to pay to end this perversion of animancy. A perversion animancers fell into time and again. Aloth nodded at Vailond as she turned away from the machine. Her mouth smiled at him, briefly. Her brow stayed knitted up over fierce eyes.

And he stared at her. An hour ago she had wanted him to teach her to read, had wanted his company. Her tanned hands, her glaring red hair, her defiance in every breath. It came to him that with her magical absorption of Engwithan runes she had just surpassed him in knowledge. She didn’t need him to teach her to read. Points of vocabulary aside, she didn’t need him for anything.

It cut him, that fact. Any friend good with a weapon would suffice for her. And he was not one for weapons.

The others were in a knot, preparing to leave Heritage Hill for good. To bring the news of their heroism to a grateful city. Vailond had brought them this far. And what had his vaunted magic done that couldn’t be done with a torch?

Vailond turned to look at him. He knew her well enough to read her own pain, that faintest tracery around her eyes and mouth. “Aren’t you coming?”

Reading. Without him. Why hadn't he come up with a better skill? “Should I?”

She frowned. “We still need to find you a soul reader.”

The favor that he hadn’t exactly requested so much as she had uncovered. “I don’t want to be a bother.”

She made a face. “Don’t be stupid, Aloth. Come on.”

Why? his mind cried. Why you, why now, why these people, why this scarred hand beckoning me onward? What did I do to deserve this?

Tyrhos planted his big wolf nose at the small of Aloth’s back. Aloth stumbled forward, and by the time he recovered he was among the party once more. Edér and Kana grinned at him. As simply as that, he was in the group, and they descended to the city together.


	37. A Hero's Reward (Edér)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond defeated the undead horrors of Heritage Hill for a reason. Now she wants her reward.

Edér wasn’t a slow walker, but he had to jog to keep up with Vailond on the warpath. There was apparently a warpath that led straight into First Fires and into the Ducal Palace.

He tensed as they passed in. He hadn’t gotten much of a welcome here yet.

Vailond stopped in front of the staff. “Hello Sidly,” she barked at the woman who kept watch in the entry hall. “The revenants at Heritage Hill have been stopped and Edér Teylecg stopped the soul machine that was doing it.”

“Uh, strictly speaking, that was you,” said Edér, and smiled sheepishly at Sidly. “Happy to help.”

Vailond stuck her chin out. “Can he read the militia records now?”

The woman she had nearly attacked swallowed. “Er…he couldn't before?”

“No. Ask your clerk.”

They walked together through the twisty halls to the stairs into the stacks. The clerk was tall and robed and very disagreeable, and she repeated her refusal. “A day is scarcely an establishment of character.”

Edér’s face was heating up. “We can go.” Part of him wanted to scream at her side. Part of him knew that would do no good. “Nobody signs release forms with revenant guts anyway.”

Vailond balled her fists on her hips. He had never seen her so forceful, and he'd watched her shoot a talking wicht in the face. “He risked his life a million times over in the Saint’s War. For the Dyrwood.”

“And that’s what concerns me,” said the clerk. “He may wish revenge on the people recorded in Readceras’ service and I cannot enable it. The answer is no.”

Vailond threw up her hands. “I wasn’t in anybody’s army. I wasn’t even here, I was in Aedyr. I don’t give a damn about who fought where except for this one person. Let me in.”

The clerk scowled down at her. “The answer is no, madam.”

“This isn’t over, missy.”

“Vail.” Edér was getting uncomfortable. “It’s all right. He’s not getting any deader, and I can prove things as easily tomorrow as today.”

Vailond scowled. “You shouldn’t have to.”

“Then what would the locals do for entertainment? Never mind. I’m hungry. You?”

She stared at the floor, then his knees, then the floor again. “Starving,” she muttered resentfully, and came away.


	38. Get a Dream, Give a Scream (Kana)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond's sleep disturbances continue at the Fox and Goose, and Kana does something about it.

Kana heard the scream and thump. He raced next door to where Vailond and Sagani slept.

The door yielded to a couple of slams. The room was dark. Something was happening between the two beds. Kana leaned over to see Sagani kneeling in turn over Vailond. Vailond’s eyes were rolled back and a white froth dripped from her mouth. She was shaking. She surged against Sagani’s arms and screamed again, a hoarse, animal sound.

Tyrhos threw himself between Sagani and the far bed. He sniffed Vailond and moaned piteously. Itumaak piled on to nuzzle Tyrhos’s ears, for what that was worth.

“She won’t wake up,” snapped Sagani. “I’ve tried everything.”

“Shh,” said Kana. “I think I can help.”

He vaulted to reach the side of the bed nearest Vailond, and sat, leaning over his knees. He touched her hair. Even in this low light it gleamed. “The long path into the dark,” he sang, “comes and goes, comes and goes, and in your travel a spark, comes and goes, comes and goes.” It was a song of coming to rest. Absently he stroked her hair as he sang.

Her froth dripped, her eyes fluttered. Her arms went slack against Sagani’s. The dwarf looked up at him like he had the answer of the hour. Maybe he did.

He looked around as he sang. The others had come, and were standing around Vailond’s inner circle, waiting for the night’s string of moments. The room was much smaller than the four-bed place the men slept in. It had a red gleam of a dying fire, and a little gray light diffusing from the window. It was a snug room, just enough for the two animals and two beds. In the thin light the rangers’ faces were red and white, like two flowers in an inviolate garden.

Vailond had stopped struggling. He took a breath. “Let’s get her to bed,” he said gently. He scooped her up and laid her on the bed nearer the door, then thought to pick her up again to let Edér pull the covers aside, then laid her down again. “There,” he sang. “Gods hold your soul, safe from harm, ever whole, no alarm...”

He sang. Vailond sighed and relaxed.

“I like it better when she’s drifting into space awake,” said Edér opposite her. “She’s going to strain something if she keeps this up.”

People were not looking at Vailond. They were looking at Kana, except Aloth, who was staring at the ceiling. Kana looked around. “What is it?”

Aloth cleared his throat.

Edér grinned. “Well, you didn’t come here excessively weighed down with…anything.”

Kana looked down. “Oh.”

“It doesn’t interfere with your singing voice,” mumbled Sagani, eyeing elsewhere with a sly smirk. “You might want to fix it before she wakes up, though.”

Durance did nothing but shake with suppressed laughter until Kana was back in his room, finding something modest to sleep in. He could laugh. For the next emergency Kana would be more prepared. Because, he knew, there would be more emergencies. And she was a fighter, but she shouldn't have to fight alone.


	39. The Awakened (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party visits the Brackenbury Sanitarium in search of evidence of the Leaden Key's activities. Vailond and Aloth find an animancer who claims to know about Awakened souls and might give Aloth some guidance with his own previous soul aspect, Iselmyr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue directly from game.

Misery and madness. The Sanitarium in Brackenbury was a house for people with broken souls. More than any place Vailond had seen, this place housed flickers and muted struggles in the soul realm. Her heart throbbed in the pained aura even in the clean, brightly lit upper halls.

More to the point, Tyrhos snarled at the ensouled statue in the main hall and wouldn’t take another step. Vailond coaxed, wheedled, and ordered; the animal would go no further into the animancers’ hall.

“Leaden Key is somewhere in there,” said Edér, “maybe he knows that.”

“If he knew that he would be helping me,” said Vailond. “Guard the outside, Tyrhos.” The wolf exhaled and backed away, his blue eyes fixed on the ensouled statue until he was out of the room.

Dreading, she moved on.

She gained permission to interview the animancers who acted as wardens and researchers. She didn’t know what she was looking for yet, so instead of making her own questions she went after Aloth’s problem.

“An expert in Awakenings?” said one scholar. “You want Bellasage. She’s in all the way from the Republics to study here.”

Vailond thanked the animancer and went downstairs into the somewhat more crowded, somewhat stonier depths of the Sanitarium. Less space, more people, and loose souls just about everywhere. Tyrhos really would hate this place. Another passing animancer directed her and the others to a big corner office.

“This is your show,” said Vailond.

“The others,” said Aloth. Was he looking more pale than usual?

Vailond nodded. “Everyone? Let’s go.”

“You can stay,” Aloth said hurriedly.

Intrigued and a little worried, Vailond stayed.

Bellasage was a thickset woman with outrageous Vailian hair. She greeted Vailond and Aloth politely, then, when she realized they were there for science, enthusiastically. “A man with an Awakened soul! An entire articulated former life! Sit, sit!” She pushed Aloth down to a bulky armchair and bustled around, affixing copper bands to his arms and head. “Now, then.” She flicked a knob on her mess of cables. “To begin. Tell me something personal, from before you Awakened.”

Aloth hesitated. He looked at Vailond. He looked away. “A lifetime ago,” he said. “There’s nothing to tell. I was just a normal child living in the Cythwood.”

“And your home?”

Vailond felt it coiling in her heart, something in her reaching to him, to the soul pierced by a blinding shard. By instinct she reached out and took his cool hand.

He closed his eyes. “Comfortable. Modest. Quiet when Mother is away, which is most of the time. Quiet enough to hear glass on wood. This is when I know to be most careful.”

Bellasage was flicking switches, turning dials, occasionally prodding one of the copper bands she had bound around her subject.

Aloth kept his eyes closed. “Father is good about hiding the bottles. Mother, when she is home, is good at pretending not to notice them.”

And he hated every word. This. This was what Vailond had gotten so recklessly angry with, when his Awakened soul aspect had nearly destroyed her search. His hand twitched and Vailond squeezed back. It seemed wrong to give up on him. He went on, the violence, the blood. His blood. The moment when something in him surged back.

“Iselmyr,” whispered Vailond.

Aloth set his jaw. “Iselmyr.”

“So she came to protect you.”

“She came to swing at something. If it benefited me, it was purely accidental.”

“The disturbance is localized to his spleen,” burbled Bellasage. “No doubt due to melancholic tendencies.”

Aloth glared at her. And whether it was him or not, his mouth said “That’s utter horseshit.”

Bellasage didn’t look disappointed. She set aside a densely written paper and started unstrapping Aloth from her contraption. “A moment while I find another kettle bulb. Brilliant, really, this is going to be a signal victory for Awakened research…” the animancer bustled out.

Vailond studied her companion. “Are you all right?”

“If all we get out of this is some warning against my spleen,” he said, “then I think I wasted our time.” His eyes opened. He looked at her.

Vailond, accustomed to meeting wounded animals, looked back without moving.

He shivered. “I’m glad the others aren’t here.”

“This is yours.” And even problem people deserved a chance to nurse wounds in the quiet. “Iselmyr’s had her life already, she shouldn’t be poking into yours. Do you think this one knows how to suppress her?”

“Almost certainly not.” Aloth stood, and seemed almost to tug free of Vailond’s hand before he realized it was wrapped around his. He stopped short and brought both hands to clasp her one.

“I can be more,” he said hoarsely. “If nothing else, I know that.”

“Words are easy.” No, wrong. She hadn’t meant to stab that in his face. “Except what you just told her, that was hard.”

“No, you’re right. I can only demonstrate.” He looked at Bellasage’s desk. “Vailond, I don’t want to be her published case study.”

After the depth of expertise Bellasage had just shown, Vailond was perfectly happy to deny her whatever joke of a paper she had meant to make. A spleen? How was that supposed to return Iselmyr to the history she belonged in? She squeezed his hand and joined him at the animancer’s desk. Aloth took the notes and measurements and crumpled them into his sleeve. “Thank you,” he muttered.

They turned toward the door together. Aloth frowned, already back to his usual worrying. Well, even if his own soul thought he didn’t know how to stick up for himself, he certainly at least knew how to predict when he would have to.

“May I ask you something personal?” he said.

“After what you just did? Of course.”

“Was it so traumatic for you? Awakening as a Watcher.”

Vailond reminded herself to close her mouth. He didn’t know. How could he? “Which time? First? Fifth? Fiftieth? I couldn’t hurt that much without dying…and I’m still alive. So no. It’s not that traumatic for me.”

He slumped. “I suppose I don’t know what answer would have made that better. Forgive me.”

She squeezed his hand. “Listen. With Iselmyr? She hurt me, and then you tried to make it better. I won’t forget that.”

“Yes.” He squeezed and frowned. “Yes.”

Then they heard it. Edér’s voice, calling clear. “Aloth. Aloth?”

Aloth’s and Vailond’s hands scattered to their proper sides. They each took a snap inward breath. Then they left that office, and did not look back.


	40. The Saboteur (Edér)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the depths of the Brackenbury Sanitarium, Vailond and her allies find a mastermind.

_During the previous chapter…_

Edér bumbled around the sanitarium offices like a polite, harmless bee. None of this was in his area of expertise. If only—slipped his mind—someone knew where to bring the supplies for the new program…

Kana watched with a broad grin. Durance had stayed behind to watch Aloth and Vailond’s office. Edér wondered whether Aloth would find what he was seeking. Would it mean an end to Iselmyr? Too bad. She could be hilarious. She’d had her chance at a lifetime, a long time ago, but she was good in the present, too.

Sagani and Itumaak stayed present and on good behavior. When Sagani laughed, it was after they had left the latest interviewee.

“Do you always play this innocent?” she said between offices.

“I’m not rightly sure what you mean,” he drawled. She snickered.

There was an animancer called Azo who had, in fact, resumed some kind of patient experiment. That entire sentence had problems, and rather than go face a rogue animancer in his own stronghold Edér retraced his steps to the Vailian animancer’s office where Durance suddenly pretended he hadn’t had his ear to the coarse-grained door.

“Aloth,” Edér said loudly. “Aloth?”

The door opened. Vailond stepped out, staring at something interesting in front of her boots. Aloth followed her, his hands working their way up his opposite sleeves in an uneasy hug.

“They didn’t take Iselmyr out, did they?” said Edér.

“Far from it,” Aloth said miserably. “I’ve given the animancer her insight. Have you found what the Leaden Key may have done here?”

“We have a name and an office number. We were going to talk to Ethelmoer upstairs, get his permission to ask what needs asking.”

“And do what needs doing,” said Vailond. She looked up and her blue eyes sparked. “Point me.”

Ethelmoer, the administrator of the Brackenbury Sanitarium, had had his soul installed in a statue in the main hall. It offered stability benefits over tenancy of a flesh body. Edér thought this was slightly insane. Relative to some of the projects he had glimpsed during his harmless amble…only slightly insane.

“Caedman Azo, again?” said Ethelmoer. “Incredible. You have my authority to dissolve his current project at once. If he wishes to be visionary, he can bring it up with me.”

On the way back downstairs Vailond took the lead. Edér found it natural to follow her to one side. This was a woman accustomed to setting the pace. Kana took her other shoulder, and they pressed down the hallways that got rougher and dingier until they rounded a corner to see a stained pathway between glistening stone walls. It was colder here. Edér heard Sagani’s small noise of disgust.

The hallways here were guarded by flesh golems twice the size of a man, aware but only barely. Containers for soul fragments, thought Edér. The afterlife of the broken.

Azo was a small rat-faced man who started speechifying about kith knowledge almost immediately. Vailond listened, her face set in stone, but Edér was starting to realize that that showed its own kind of pain. Regardless, she talked him out of the key to the North Wing.

There were things in there he was not prepared for.

The weeping. The hoarse shouts. The cells stinking behind narrow grates in splintered wooden doors. Horses got better accommodations than this. Deathbeds housed less weeping.

Vailond’s face was still. She moved as though sleepwalking. Edér kept his shield half raised. She came to a door at the end of the hallway and pulled it open. A boy stood there, hunching, drooling.

Her brow twitched and wrinkled. “I know you,” she whispered.

Edér didn’t see what started it. The boy dropped as though his strings were cut. Vailond cried out and spun. The nearest two flesh golem guards shuddered and bellowed…and charged.

Well, Edér had his shield ready, after all. He slammed the one going for Vailond hard enough to fully reverse its course, and trampled over to give her space for arrows. It wasn’t even dead before he had checked the other away from a startled-looking Kana.

Vailond directed the fight in a straight line to the stairs. Constructs and mindless patients tried to pile upon them, driven by something Edér couldn’t see but that Vailond was clearly following. When they got upstairs all was quiet and formal. Vailond sucked in a breath and scowled.

“Is everyone all right?” she said in a voice clearly struggling to stay level.

“All parts present and accounted for,” said Edér. “Except possibly my pride.” The others gave their confirmations.

Vailond nodded sharply. “There was one soul. It could move, it kicked the constructs into acting, it jumped between people to chase us. It was ruining animancers' work,” she said. “Just like the machine. Something is still driving with the Leaden Key trying to make animacy look bad.” She banged her hip with her fist. “I just don’t know who.”

“Think it’ll rouse up any other buildings full of shaky souls?” offered Edér. “The Dozens aren’t that bright…”

“I don’t know,” said Vailond. “I don’t know.”


	41. Knock Knock, Who's There, Watcher, Watcher Who (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edér tries to discern some ground rules about the joking thing.

There was an inn in Brackenbury, and it served better food than the Fox and Goose, and people were quiet for much of the evening. The atmosphere of the screaming sanitarium seemed to have followed them, stifling conversation. Still, they shared a table. Tyrhos was back at Vailond’s side, quietly nuzzling Itumaak.

When Vailond got up, Edér did, too. As she came around the table he touched her arm. She stopped dead, shocked by the thrill. He just looked innocently at her. “A word?”

Unsure of where she might find privacy, she led him upstairs. Tyrhos followed, for once not seeming to pick up on her tension. The hallway had doors all down one side and little cutouts on the other with tables in them. She picked one and didn’t sit. “What is it?” she said, proud of saying something intelligent.

“So,” he said. He looked at her. He looked at Tyrhos. He grinned faintly, and patted the wolf’s flank. “Quite a lot of trouble.”

“We have a name. Thaos. I’m going to find him. He was at the ritual that did this to me. I’m _going_ to find him.”

“I know,” he said gently. “There was something else.”

“What?”

“That crack about the Dozens…hm. Well. I didn’t mean to sound…insensitive.”

“What? No. You’re you. Don’t stop being you.”

“Sure, but. To lay it out plain, mocking the Dozens’ souls is not the core of my existence. I could give it up.”

“You probably come up with a million soul jokes.”

He didn’t deny it. “But they bother you.”

“You know, you haven’t said enough of them for me to be sure?”

“What? Really?”

“I mean, it’s nice of you to care.” It was hard to express. “You can joke.”

“Yeah?” He scritched Tyrhos’ ears. Tyrhos yawned and leaned into him. Vailond was genuinely not certain which element of this conversation Edér liked most.

Rules and the potential pain of breaking them swirled in her head. She was supposed to give him something he could act on, didn’t need to guess about. “Just call me by my name when you do it.” Instead of “Watcher.”

“Vail. I’ll have to remember the really good ones I come up with so you don’t miss ‘em.”

“Proud?”

“This and getting stabbed instead of you are my main skills.”

“You’re good at them.”

“Nice to be appreciated. —Say, what do you call a Watcher in a dungeon cell?”

“Sad?”

“Soulitary confinement.”

“Oh, boy.”

“You said I could.”

She grinned. He grinned. “I know,” she said.

Kana’s voice boomed. “Is that witty wordplay I hear weeping for its lamed brethren?”

“That’s high comedy in Gilded Vale,” said Edér, straightening to his full height and maintaining a straight face that fooled no one.

“Oh, the horizons yet unsnarked.” The aumaua stood by the table and beamed. “Come, may I steal our elfin friend from you?”

Edér gave her this incredible smirk. “Anybody trying to steal her will find he’s grabbed more than he can carry.”

“He could carry me,” Vailond corrected. “You, too. You’re both twice my size.”

“Until Tyrhos gets involved,” Kana said cheerfully. “Come, let’s take a turn outside. You and Durance just aren’t the same indoors.”

And she didn’t say a lot, but Kana found them a garden under the moonlight, and for a while things were calmer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This marks thirty days since the beginning of the story.


	42. Arkemyr's Dazzling Nights (Aloth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloth tries a new technique to ease Vailond's visions.

The morning was spent tying up questions from the sanitarium, for the animancers did have questions after the destruction of the prior day. The afternoon was for errands: Vailond needed to get Tyrhos the best steak in town, Edér had notched his sword, Sagani’s boot laces were wearing out, and for his part, Aloth went through the soothing ritual of copying material into a fresh grimoire. They came together at the Fox and Goose without formal plans. Vailond, the fulcrum, stayed stable as the world turned around her.

Dinner conversation stayed bright. Aloth weighed his words and let them fly. It was early yet when Vailond rose. “I’m going to get some sleep,” she said.

“Sleep well,” said Edér. He had adopted an artless cordiality with her. She accepted it as she accepted all attitudes from her companions. She laughed at his jokes, which seemed to indicate she was charitable as well as even-keeled.

Aloth waited five minutes, then went upstairs.

He knew which room was hers. He knocked. Some time later the door cracked open.

“What’s wrong?” said Vailond.

“Nothing,” Aloth said quickly. “I wanted to…that is, after some consideration…ah. I wanted to make an offer.”

She looked at him.

“May I come in?”

“Sagani’s here.”

“Oh.” The need for privacy tore at him, but then, at the moment Vailond might not trust him alone. She knew too much to feel neutral about him. “May I come in?” he said again.

Vailond opened the door. “Come in. What do you want?”

“You still dream here?” he said.

She seemed to deflate. “Yes. Kana helped, but…yes.”

“I have….” A hypothesis? A hope? “A hunch,” he said. “You should return to bed.”

The room was not bright. She was silent for a few seconds. Then she moved, a sturdy little shadow, and dug under the blankets, ending up on her back with her head on the pillow, dim in the faint light from the oil-paper window. Sagani, for her part, was silent, and the animals were nothing more than peacefully breathing roadblocks.

He avoided them and edged one hip onto the bed beside Vailond. “Tell me if this distresses you.” He focused. He accepted the weight of the grimoire in his satchel. Then he moved his hands. A little flurry of softly colored lights appeared before Vailond’s face.

“Hm?” she said. It wasn’t distress. In fact the curiosity sounded secure, not suspicious.

“Let it be,” said Aloth. “Watch whatever is easiest, or close your eyes.”

Arkemyr’s Dazzling Lights was made to overload the senses, to cause bewilderment. At its core it was a distraction. Something that wasn’t a Watcher’s vision. He heard Vailond take a deep breath, and then another. He did every color but purple. He made the motion slow, the light fade minute by minute. He had taken endurance trials in school, of course, but here, directing each mote with continuity and varying tempo, he found himself straining his concentration within minutes. He was doing it for her. He could manage.

Vailond was silent. She had a little smile on her face, phantasmagorical in the shifting light yet undeniably sweet. She flopped over to her side and breathed easy.

Aloth finally dropped his concentration. His brain felt like it had run for miles. He stood, listened to make sure he hadn’t bothered her, then moved.

“Damn,” Sagani said quietly from the other bed.

“Let her know I didn’t touch her,” said Aloth. That seemed important.

Nobody bothered him when he reached the big room with the rest of her allies. He fell asleep quickly that night, and dreamed only of lights.


	43. Summons to Hadret House (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond doesn't thank Aloth, but they're on good terms. Then she gets a summons to the mysterious Hadret House, the site of Defiance Bay's Intelligence wing.

Vailond sat at the round table. The bartender had reserved it for her this morning without prompting, as though she’d given it a proper landowner’s claim. Like it was doing her any good while she slept. City ways were strange.

She could still bolt out the door. She knew the straight line out of the city and into the countryside. But day by day her condition settled deeper into her mind, and she knew she might not hunt for a long time to come. Though, if she got an answer from the Leaden Key, she might enjoy clearing them out in newfound freedom.

Aloth came downstairs, looking thoughtful. She met his eyes and didn’t know what to say or do. His spell had been soft, soothing, lulling…had banished the colors of spirit lives. Even when her eyes closed the lights had played on her lids, lighter than a breath. Nobody had ever done that for her before.

She looked at him and jerked her head toward an empty seat. He smiled at everyone and sat.

“A pleasant morning,” said Kana. “Tell me, Aloth, do you feel any different since the sanitarium?”

There went his cheer. “One more person is acquainted with my…issue,” he said. “That’s all the change I saw.”

“Fascinating. Then Iselmyr will remain with us?”

“Any time I cannot fight her.”

“Well, that’s not so bad,” said Edér. “Say, can you bring her out now?”

“Why would I do that?”

“She’s just so funny!”

Sagani looked pointedly at his hand, the one Itumaak had bitten during the attempted petting. The wound was going purple at the edges. She said, “If you keep this up he’ll bite you, too.”

There was a commotion at the door. Everyone looked over as a small boy threaded between exiting guests. He studied Vailond’s table, then darted forward.

She recoiled. He stopped short. “Message for you, Miss Vailond.”

“Who the hell are you?” said Vailond.

“Regards from Dunryd Row, Miss Vailond. Lady Webb would like to speak with you in Hadret House.”

This did not explain anything. “Who is Lady Webb?”

“Who is she? She’s…she runs Dunryd Row. Nobody’s ever seen her, at least I haven’t. She wants to talk to you.”

“And I would because…?”

Edér half raised one hand. “I think we should go, Vail.”

She frowned at him. He didn’t back down. “Fine. We go.”

“Dunryd Row runs every intelligence errand in Defiance Bay,” Edér explained. “If they want you, you’re a player in town.”

Vailond thought of Edér’s militia records. “We can use that.”

“I was going to say we could avoid it,” said Aloth, “but I defer to the one they called by name.”

She looked at his passive pale face. He had already been more than sympathetic. “You don’t have to come.”

His answer was quick. “I’ll go, if you’ll have me.”

“Hm.” Obviously, yes. He seemed to understand, and he had a nice smile.

“Do you seek to grab a city’s intelligence apparatus by the tail?” said Durance. “Be careful what you give them.”

“I’ll give them my firstborn if they tell me how to stop being a Watcher,” she said.

“Your firstborn is relatively harmless,” said Durance. “Tread carefully.”

He was right, annoyingly enough. “Hm,” she said. “Let’s go.”


	44. From the Past, One Vision (1) (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond's journey to Hadret House is interrupted by a vision longer and more vivid than any she's had as a Watcher. Explanations are scarce.

Morning in the city, with daylight risers just starting to mingle with the laborers and barkers of dawn. When Vailond stepped out, her entire party followed.

The boy beckoned down cobbled terrace after cobbled terrace. Vailond hadn’t really noted the neighborhood on her way in, but in daylight the houses were big and handsome and probably full of stupid people. She realized with a pang that the thieving side of her life experience would get her further than the hunting side here.

Except for the question of Watcherdom. There, she had to hunt.

Edér and Aloth were chattering behind her. Not the most natural of fellows, but they had been nice, and they never seemed discouraged for long. She’d had worse companions. Come to think of it, why hadn’t she shaken some of yesteryear’s hangers-on earlier? Old news, old hunts. She knew better now what she could accept and what she wouldn’t.

She felt it as it hooked her gut and pulled. She stumbled and was outside again, viewing the world through a purple lens. Only, there was someone there who hadn’t been there in the solid world.

He wore a robe, like the stranger responsible for her condition. He spoke in the voice of settled authority. He looked directly at her, and looked concerned. He spoke to her of failures as a missionary…her failures.

It drove to her core. It was not like her sleeping visions: this was _her_ , truly, answering him now as she had answered him before. It felt like she had always known this conversation. She wanted to leave the Order. _His_ Order. For the ignorant had shaken her faith, her trust in the gods. 

Yet he spoke, and it soothed the knot in her stomach. For her he promised a life of meaning, the righteousness of the gods. The rightness of staying.

He was right, of course. And then she fell through to the garish day, and there were only her companions and a miserably barking Tyrhos.

The wolf leaped to shove his nose into her stomach. She patted him. The touch of his fur helped. “I know,” she whispered. “It’s wrong. I’m sorry.” That man had sounded so reasonable. He sounded like he knew her.

“I always try to see souls when you drift like that,” Kana said brightly. “Nothing yet.”

“Wait, is that normal?” said Sagani.

“I just let her go with it,” said Edér. “Everyone needs a hobby.” But he wasn’t smiling. “It was longer,” he said quietly, staring at her. “Did you know that?”

“I was talking to someone.”

“Oh. Did you run the show? Or did he?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry I didn’t take minutes.”

He flinched. “I’m sorry. I just don’t like leaving my friends places I can’t follow.”

Vailond sighed. “Hm. Now promise me you’re not already planning the witty thing to say the next time this happens.”

Edér quirked one eyebrow. “So if I already have, that means I’m not planning right this minute, right?”

She glared until she laughed with the others, and she laughed until that sick feeling went away. He was good for that.


	45. Mother Spider (Durance)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond meets with Lady Webb, and gets an unexpected clue.

Durance had seen hives like Dunryd Row before. Frenetic movement, the stumbling of people too crooked to remember a straight path. Vailond acted normal here: courteous if minimally sophisticated when she had to talk, alert at all times. She invited trust but not intimacy. Woedica might have underestimated this victim. Her Leaden Key might yet be caught out.

The house was large and full of itself. Vailond stopped at the base of a crimson-carpeted stairway. She angled her head, looking down at her own shoulder so that those in her wake could see the corner of her eye. “Stay with me,” she said quietly.

So that was what a Watcher looked like begging.

Durance followed her up the stairs and into an office where a woman translucent with age sat among piles of papers. It took only a cursory glance to realize that there was a system, and it was beyond his ability to immediately analyze. That alone made this woman interesting.

Lady Webb was, at the surface of it, interested in keeping the peace in Defiance Bay. She did so with secrets and deviousness, but in the end, her interest was the stability of the city. As long as Vailond’s questing coincided with this, Lady Webb was interested in pooling resources.

Fool. Webb had more ciphers at her disposal than Vailond had brains in her whole body. This was not an even exchange, not unless there was something else going on. Not unless Lady Webb wanted a Watcher. Durance watched with a sense of dread as Vailond nodded and played along.

Then Lady Webb started talking in earnest. She claimed to know the identity of the hooded figure Vailond had seen during her initiation as Watcher. Thaos ix Arkannon. Durance took it in his mind, cradled it, acknowledged that there was so little in a name and so much in actions. To hear Lady Webb tell it, Thaos had been born and born again the same man for over a thousand turns of the Wheel. The gods themselves would spit on such a man. All but Woedica, anyway.

Durance thought of the weight of his own history. If secrets could pile high enough to kill a man in one lifetime, what would they do to an immortal?

Vailond reported the machine that had failed to save her. Lady Webb smiled with bloodless lips. “Ah, the Engwithans forged machines for many purposes,” she said. “But one that can call a bîaŵac, or wield one that has risen? I think that machine must be rare indeed.”

“If you find one. You have to tell me.”

There was a silence. Lady Webb raised her eyebrows. “Share what you have learned of Thaos and the Leaden Key’s activities, and I will direct you as best I can. Good day, Vailond. And…friends.” She looked around at Vailond’s companions.

“Say my name,” said Durance, “if we are to be open in such things.”

Lady Webb brought her chin up. “Durance,” she said. “Not your original name, but let’s not worry about that. And Aloth Corfiser, educated in Aedyr, a most avid writer. And Edér Teylecg, who troubles our archivists. And…Sagani of the cold trail. Would that I had more to say to you.”

Sagani fidgeted. “You’ve said enough.”

“We should go,” said Vailond. Was that discomfort on her soft tanned face? “Thank you. We should go.”


	46. Aloth's Path Forward (Aloth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond and Aloth touch base. Turns out he can still be useful, for reading, maybe for being a friend.

Aloth gave Vailond the shifting lights again. Her sigh of contentment was a balm for many recent ills. Was it enough to go on? He went to bed. In the morning he waited for Durance, Kana, and Edér to leave. He packed up his spare robe and grimoires. He unpacked them. He packed them.

The door to the inn’s largest bedroom creaked open.

“Needs grease,” muttered Vailond.

He spun. “Can I help you?”

“Funny,” she said. “You really can.”

“I was just going to, um…”

Iselmyr hurled herself forward and blocked his view of the world. He gathered his focus and surged past her, whatever she’d said. It hadn’t been time for much. He felt his face twitching out of normal control, but the point was, he was back. And Vailond didn’t look upset at whatever Iselmyr had managed to spew.

“Well, I wouldn’t say a _complete_ – oh, you’re back. You did it.” Vailond gave it the same approval he had seen her give a victorious street scuffler.

“I’m not sure I can consistently suppress her again.”

“Keep at it.” She tossed her short red hair and it bounced around her cheekbones. “I’m sorry you didn't get what you wanted from the sanitarium.”

Aloth's stomach tightened. The sanitarium had been a complete failure. Part of him wanted to go continue his life far, far away from the idiocies of self-anointed animancers. But then, here was someone unrelated and unfazed. Vailond was here, with him. And talking.

“Those animancers had no real control over souls,” he said. He wasn’t sure what he had really expected. He had lived in a city larger than Defiance Bay, but he had hoped that the smaller place would still have some basic amenities. Some basic scholarship. Some basic _something_.

Instead he had a city that stank of fish and a clown’s assortment of inept scholars.

“You know now why she shows up,” she said.

“At the meeting of hammer and flint. I know.”

“You can stand up to her.”

“And that’s how you understand the world. I don't know how to fight.”

“Be angry. Being angry helps with a lot of things.”

“Are you angry? About being a Watcher?”

She bit her lip and said nothing. Already regretting the intrusion, he reached for her hand. She clasped it with her own.

She squeezed. “There’s something you should know.”

“What’s that?”

“I still can’t read normal script. The Engwithan runes are totally different. I still need to learn how to write a normal alphabet.”

He felt himself smiling before he could stop. “Then you want my teaching?”

“Yes. I do.”

His heart swelled. “It would be my honor.”

“Good.” She cocked her head. “You talk good. And…I think you’re decent. That’s all.”

“Then if that’s enough…my friend.”

Was she hard to read? She smiled in a fireburst of half a second’s duration. Then she walked away.

“I cannae—” the voice inside said.

“Shut up,” he said voicelessly, and got breakfast.


	47. Doubts and Comfort on the Trail (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sagani has an evening of frustration, and talks about it. With a little prompting from Tyrhos and Itumaak.

Vailond heard the racket in advance: Itumaak the fox yipping madly and Tyrhos the wolf whining and stamping.

The door to the inn’s room opened. Tyrhos backed in, gray fur bristling. Sagani, not quite steady, followed. Itumaak was a white figure at her heels, herding with nose and noise.

Vailond sat on her bed and stared. “Whatever Tyrhos did, I didn’t put him up to it.”

“Sorry to bother you,” said Sagani. Her eyes were a little glassy.

“Not a problem.” To be honest, Vailond didn’t like the idea of Sagani wandering around like this. “You haven't been drinking the house brew, have you?”

The dwarf grimaced. “Takes the paint off the walls…and the pain from the falls.”

“You’re not liking staying here?”

“It's not that, exactly.”

Vailond bit her lip. Interrogation was outside her experience.

Sagani shook her head and, nudged by Itumaak, came to sit beside. “We're in a city now. More people than I've seen in a year. And this figurine, which is supposed to glow when I'm close, is doing nothing. Five years and a cold trail.” Her voice lowered. “Was I crazy to agree to this?”

Yes. But sometimes your hunt chose you. Vailond tried to think fast enough to be useful. “You’re serving your village. There is…honor, in that. Not that I know much about that.”

The animals sat attentively by the foot of the beds. Sagani stared at them. “What's it like, to hunt something that’s possible?”

Ah. The question Vailond didn’t want to hear. She wasn’t sure she _had_ a hunt like that.

Sagani sighed. “I survived hunting for five years and I could go for quite a few more. What gets me is the loss of communication. I want to tell my children—”

“Your what?”

Sagani licked her lips, looking startled. “Children. Little things. Squeaky voices.”

“I know what children are.” Vailond attempted to reconcile this. “You have them?”

“Five. Three still alive. And I want to show them everything I’m doing out here. To work them a blanket so they can see where I've been while I hunted for our elder.”

Five, and three. How matter-of-fact. “Write a song. Kana could help.”

“I'll think about it.” She looked at Vailond. She slumped. “This…talking through this…I didn't think I would get to. With anyone.”

“A lone hunt stills two hearts.”

“You say that here, too?”

“I would call it silly but you only ever see me with Tyrhos.”

“I guess…I don’t know if they’ve forgotten me.” She looked like Vailond might have an answer. “I wonder sometimes which memories go first. When the pride goes. The affection.”

“Maybe it’s the elf talking, but five years aren’t enough for that.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Sagani was everything Vailond could want in a fellow hunter: pragmatic, single-minded, and honest. And she was sad. Gingerly Vailond brought up one hand and half hugged her. Sagani leaned in, then passed a sleeve’s cuff across her eyes and took a deep breath.

Tyrhos and Itumaak, apparently pleased with themselves, lay on the floor and observed.

“Oh, you’re smug,” Sagani muttered, and laughed. It was a good sound.

Vailond struggled to continue. “Tell me about your family. Your husband.”

“Kallu?” She sounded surprised, not displeased. “What do you want to know?”

Whatever would keep her talking. “What does he do in your village?”

“Well, he tends the hearth in the home he built. Raises our children, though by now only Malaak would be living there. He carves ivory and bone. Decorations, records, stories.”

“Is that how you keep your records?”

“We have more centralized records on paper. Some younger villagers say that carving ivory is a pointless pastime, a relic we don’t need…I say that may be, but we wouldn’t be who we are without it.”

“So just like you finding Persoq,” Vailond blurted.

Sagani’s eyebrows went up. “I suppose so. Funny, to think we’re pulling in the same harness five years distant.” She paused. “I like that.”

Vailond kept her arm around Sagani's shoulders. “You smile when you talk about him.”

“We’ve always been happy together.”

“Good.”

“And who knows…maybe it’s not that much farther to go.”

Itumaak edged over and nuzzled up under Tyrhos’s thick neck fur, where he seemed content to rest. It was that kind of evening.


	48. Galawain's Share (Kana)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the way to Sagani's bluffs, Kana observes Vailond's contribution to the party's supplies.

“Kana, can you do your asking-people thing to find out where the nearest high cliffs over the sea are? I think it’s south. I think. But I don’t want to spend the next month hugging a beach to get to it.”

“You know,” said Kana, smiling, “talking to people is a learnable skill.”

Vailond balled her fists on her hips. “But you’re good at it.”

Well, he did get results from guards and mercenaries in and around the Fox and Goose. He brought his findings to Vailond just after midday. “There are cliffs that match your description. It’ll be a day and a morning, by anyone’s measure,” he said.

“We can go fast,” said Vailond. Kana had met few enough elves; he didn’t know whether her relentlessness was cultural or personal. Her blue eyes looked nice when she was trying not to let a smile slip. She was eager on a hunt, and anxious not to show it, and powerless to conceal anxiety. He felt a little accomplished at having come to read her that much. “Let’s get everybody packed up and to the east gate.”

They did, and made good time on the road that ran from cobbles to slats to dirt, but sunset overtook them in rolling countryside, close to the beach but far from any cliffs. As soon as everyone stopped Vailond said “I have to go” and took her bow. Tyrhos started bounding toward the nearest hilltop. Vailond made a strange sound that might have been laughter, and sprinted after the wolf with a speed and length of stride that Kana had never suspected. She looked different with the flare of sunset on her windblown red hair. The muscled little elf always carried a coiled power; here, at last, it stretched in freedom.

Aloth stood gaping. He looked at Kana and hurriedly shut his mouth. Then, a second later, “Was she happy?”

Edér had a pipe in his hand. “How would we know?”

Aloth’s voice picked up a kind of strain with more pathos than his usual irritation. “Is she coming back?”

Sagani eyed the horizon critically. “She said she’d see this through.”

“You could find her, couldn’t you?” said Edér. “Does Itumaak track things?”

“He could find Tyrhos in a country bigger than this. Vailond’s lower priority.” Aloth took a sharp breath, then snapped his mouth shut and looked elsewhere. Sagani frowned at him. “Sorry. Look, they would have to be trying to get clear of me, and I don’t think they’d succeed even then. All we have to do is keep the camp safe ‘til morning.”

“I will watch,” said Durance, leaning back from the fire he had wrought during everyone else’s observations.

They took dried food from their packs. They sat and talked a little bit, about the road, about Defiance Bay and what it had or hadn’t done for them. Sagani sounded happy to be back on her Persoq’s trail. Aloth was guarded, and he avoided people’s eyes when Vailond was mentioned. Edér stuck to wry observations, never quite saying he found Defiance Bay corrupt and disappointing. He could still hang humor on that. Oh, Vailond wasn’t done with him. She had made few promises, maybe one to each of them, and she hadn’t gotten his answers yet.

Yes. Even if Sagani’s prowess failed, Vailond’s promises to Edér and Kana would draw her back. Kana felt better lying down when he thought of that.

The wet thump woke him.

The others were sitting up. The night breeze had less of a bite and more of an insistent nibble. Moonlight lay bright on the ocean and silvery on the hills. Next to the banked fire, Vailond had just dropped a pair of housecat-sized animals, both of them very dead.

She looked at Kana, her eyes shadowed. She grinned. “We eat meat for breakfast.”

She turned toward the moon and Kana was shocked to see something red-black smeared across her cheeks and forehead. “Vailond!” he cried. “What hit you?”

She shook her head, unconcerned. In this light, with this posture, after this hunt, she had the cold beauty of an idol. “That’s anointing,” she said, her voice calm and low. “Blood from those creatures. It was part of the offering to Galawain.”

Kana had always assumed that this could be done without rubbing corpses on one’s face. “Galawain has strange tastes.”

Her mouth twitched. “I dunno. Blood’s classic.”

“You know Eothas goes for vegetable oil,” Edér said seriously from the far side of the fire. “Just putting that out there.”

Only one of those two gods was still walking, but Kana wouldn’t be the one to say it.

Tyrhos settled at the firelight’s edge and started licking his side. Vailond touched his head affectionately, then sat with legs crossed beside her kills and started doing something with a broad-bladed knife. Kana watched her face, not her hands. This, moonlight and fire, darkness and blood, was Vailond’s true métier. The blunt, guarded creature roaming the streets of Defiance Bay was an animal out of her element, as lost in a city as he felt in the Dyrwood.

She had done the wise thing. She had surrounded herself with people who understood civilization. Also Durance. And for them she brought dead animals, and made sacrifices to her god with blood on her face. He had known her when she was merely looking for something. Here, she hunted.

He bedded down strangely comforted, and her knife’s whispers served for lullaby.


	49. Persoq's Cliff (Sagani)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sagani reaches the place of Vailond's vision. Her pursuit of her reincarnated village elder may be drawing to a close.

There was a sense of fatalistic dread that Sagani had gotten used to. The feeling that her clues were worthless, that her hunt was doomed, that after all this time, she had nothing in her hands but failure. All her figurine had to show her was how far she was from the truth.

The Watcher’s stubbornness had re-energized her. Tyrhos’s respectful attention reminded her of other animal companions back home, being part of a family. In short, she was on the trail, and if it wasn’t the right one, well, it was better than standing at a river wondering which way her quarry had swum.

Vailond walked without smiling. She responded when people spoke directly to her, and roved the scenery with her dark blue eyes when they did not. She led, but she was a contrast to the serene and eloquent elders of the Naasitaq. Vailond had the patience of a hunter, coiled to strike, but none of the certainty.

Well, could Sagani blame her?

People passed on the road. Wagons, families, hungry-eyed vagrants. The land here was sick, like the whole Dyrwood. Edér and Kana chatted anyway, and were pointed southeast.

Cliffs. Where Persoq had been. She didn't sleep much that night. If she'd set traps she would be checking them over and over. Soon, her heart promised. Soon.

She sneezed.

“You're up, too, huh?” Edér's voice carried.

“There's time to sleep when—” she hesitated over it “—when my search is done.”

“You know, people say that. Then another search comes up.” He unfolded from his bedroll and gestured for her to walk with him into the night.

“Do you think you'll find your answers?” she said, lengthening her stride.

A silence, judicious. “For once there's a chance,” he said. “I don't know why it took her to shock me out of Gilded Vale. But she's not taking half measures.”

“New question. Do you think she'll find her answers?”

Edér wrapped his arms around his ribs. “I don't know. Wouldn't be right, leaving her unfinished.”

“You and I aren't experts in souls.”

“Sometimes you have to try anyways.”

“I like her. I wasn't expecting that.”

“She's all right.”

“She's trying very hard to buy us.”

Edér gave that due thought. “I get the feeling she doesn't have a lot of friends. And that's before the Watcher thing.”

“And you're going to benefit.”

“So far? We all are. I’d stop, but she seems satisfied doing what she’s doing.”

“Which brings us here.”

“We could talk shop all night.” He smiled wryly and took out his pipe. He didn’t fill or light it, just ran it over his lips. “Tell me something about where you're from.”

“Really? Massuq is…small. A couple hundred of us.”

“Like Gilded Vale, pre-hanging. Did you have a Mayor running things?”

“One by himself? Oh, no…”

They went on under the moving patches of stars. Little things about places they’d come from, places they’d gone. When they turned back it was in relaxed companionship.

Much later, as she curled in her bedroll, she realized that he had talked through her nerves without so much as a false step.

To think, she'd nearly turned down this party.

She slept peacefully and dreamed of the reborn, and arrows at her side.


	50. A Glimpse of the Elder (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond locates the next clue in Sagani's search. It isn't an ending, but it's a direction.

Vailond missed the trees. The land here was coarse with salt grasses and low dunes, and trees were few. This place was too exposed.

She perked up at every rise. So did Tyrhos and Itumaak. So did Sagani.

The rises grew taller, their edges toward the sea rougher and stonier. Now Vailond hugged the line of the bluffs, watching, listening. For what, she didn’t know. And then, in a moment, she knew exactly what she was looking for.

It was purple, hanging shoulder-high at cliff’s edge, clearly left over from something larger. At least, it was clear to someone who had been doing this as long as Vailond had. She took in a deep breath. “This is it,” she said.

“He was here?” said Sagani.

“Not long ago. Weeks, maybe?” The reincarnation of her village’s elder had left a shred of soul, almost a breadcrumb. Vailond thought about how many weaker souls might have pressed themselves to earth in remote places like this, then stopped because it dizzied her.

She pushed out everyone around her, and she stepped into the other frame, and she watched.

“He’s running, fast,” she said absently. “He knows these woods, or he knows how to pick a path through thicker woods. So quickly. I can’t get a…an adra arch. A natural adra arch, taller than a kith.”

Sagani let out an uneven breath. “More progress than I’ve made in a year.”

Vailond pulled herself back to the surface world. She must have been tired; it took a moment. But then she was there. “Does anyone know where that is?”

The party was quiet. “I could ask,” Kana said bravely.

“We can regroup at Caed Nua,” said Vailond. “Adra arch or Thaos sighting, we’ll be ready to go out.”

“You’re the Watcher,” said Sagani. “I’ve waited this long.”

“But we will go. I promise.”

Sagani half grinned. “I’ve never seen an adra arch before. We should take souvenirs.”

“So that’s what we came all the way out here for,” said Edér. “Longish walk for a short talk.”

“Short walk for a long hunt,” said Sagani. “It’s all a matter of perspective.”

He nodded. “Fair enough.”

For a second Vailond was afraid that he was annoyed to be out here, wasting time on somebody else’s problem. But he caught her eye, and he smiled, and she felt a rush to realize that, no. He didn’t mind at all.


	51. The Fire Doesn't Heal (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Durance reminisces by the fire. It isn't a fun experience. Here is Vailond's first insight into Durance's past.

Durance lit the camp’s fire, as he usually did. He used a pair of small flat-bladed knives, one primitive flint, one modern steel, both dull with striking. It was actually kind of stylish. Vailond thought that the flames of his devotion might do just as well but he’d stopped speaking to her for a day and a half after she’d suggested it.

He lit a second one that night, out of quiet earshot from the others in the cozy dell Itumaak had found for them.

And Vailond came. She knelt between light and dark, feet tucked under herself. Durance sat on a stone by the fire, too close by anyone else’s standards, and his sweat ran freely as he stared at the runic staff he was bracing against the rocky ground.

Vailond watched. The staff pulsed red-orange as if heated from the inside. Veins ran all up and down, clustering around the priest’s hands. She felt like if she just stared a little closer she would understand something, something written into that strange living weapon.

She knelt to face him over the fire.

Durance leered. “It’s a poor night for a girl to be out without her furs.”

Something about him always made her want to answer. “It’s a poor night for a man to be outside his four walls.”

His mouth turned down. “Which four would those be, I wonder? Shelter is complex, the more you look for it. Ah, but you’re distracted by my… _staff_.”

The veins twisted into an alphabet she couldn't recognize, rippled, smoothed back to currents. Letters struggled between his knuckles. “There’s writing on it.”

“A Watcher can see it. A priest, too, perhaps. It casts shadows from the past.”

He started rambling then, his voice thin, often trailing into silence. Vailond struggled to keep up. But her understanding grew, and was shaped, and grew again, into a terrible history. Durance spoke of the things he had done in the Saint’s War at the command of his goddess Magran. The goddess of trials. The guardian of the Dyrwood.

The goddess who had moved her followers to create the Godhammer, and destroy the god Eothas.

“You were an engineer of the Godhammer,” she said. Her voice stuck a little.

He could understand. He spoke like he had embers on his tongue. “My hands were guided.”

“Twelve, just like the Dozen who held him in place. And eleven of you died.”

“All that day. And not all that day. Some people die by pieces.”

“And you?”

“Perhaps the death of faith would spare me the rest of the descent. But I have known her power. And I have known the cold on its other side. For I have had no clear word since then.” He leaned closer to the fire. “Nothing compares to her arms, least of all burning sticks.” He spoke of the war, and the purges, of the murders he had done in search of the next clear trial, peeling layers away from his blackened soul. She listened intently. Somewhere along the line she stopped interrupting. Somewhere further he seemed to slow himself, seemed to realize the flood she was sitting in.

He dismissed her with sharp words. She kept a calm face as she turned toward the other fire and her more cheerful companions. So he had ended a war and been shut out after. She could move on. She had a feeling, from his grip on that shifting staff and the longing in his eyes when he spoke of his divine whore, that he never would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is hard because I have no desire to transcribe the game, but elaborating on Durance is impossible.


	52. Caed Nua: Prepare for Below

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edér and Aloth prep for Kana's mission to the Endless Paths of Od Nua. Cooking is contemplated.

The weather held fair as Edér and his companions passed Defiance Bay by the east bridge and turned their steps toward Caed Nua. They would camp once in the countryside, then reach the keep in the afternoon. Vailond was serious and wary, as usual. Edér wasn’t sure whether civilized buildup at Caed Nua would make her happier or more stressed. She was pulling together a new little world, and he hoped she could recognize that.

She mumbled, sometimes, when they walked. He interrupted her with a casual word the first time, but within hours she was back. She didn’t seem to realize she was doing it.

He looked up. He looked forward. He made sure she kept walking straight.

Caed Nua’s walls had fresh stones in them, and people on the walls waved to greet Vailond and company. Four and a half weeks and some motivated builders had cleaned up the keep, removed some damaged buildings, put up some fresh ones, and begun growing the garden patches into ordered spots of color. Edér regretted the loss of wildflowers, a little bit. Still, gardens were nice.

Vailond led the way straight into the keep (Edér checked the roof: it looked all right) and up to the throne where the Steward’s soul rested. “Hi,” she said. “How are you?”

“Very well,” said the Steward. “Caed Nua develops by leaps and bounds.”

“Anything come up?”

“Literally?” said Edér.

“The creatures beneath have not mounted an attack,” said the Steward. “This is consistent with many years of dormancy.”

“But we have to go down there for Kana’s tablet.”

“I cannot help you below the first sub-basement. Only know that we have hirelings enough to defend the keep from without.”

“We’ve become quite a team,” boomed Kana. “I’m confident we can face whatever is down there.”

Edér drifted away from the conversation and took out his pipe. Caed Nua’s main hall was pretty airy, but he had a feeling that his pipe’s smoke would be more welcome outdoors. Tyrhos would probably snort at him until he left.

He didn’t make it to the door, though. Aloth had settled at a little lectern to the side of the main hall. He was in unfamiliar blue robes, embroidered and practically pressed. Having been here for three hours, he’d probably already submitted his regular ones for laundering. He pulled out paper, ink, and quill and started scribbling. Edér did sometimes wonder whether Iselmyr ever wrote anything Aloth could cast. He probably wouldn’t out of spite, but it would be funny.

Aloth looked up from his book. “Yes? What is it?” He seemed to cringe a lot less over this last week.

“Vail’s getting ready to start digging beneath Caed Nua,” reported Edér.

“As I understand it, there’s plenty already excavated.”

“Haven’t asked her yet why she thinks a tablet from Rauatai got to be all the way out here. But she and Kana are excited.”

“Excited?”

Edér shrugged. “It’s a relative measure.”

“I wonder, sometimes.”

“Wonder what?”

“Whether she fights other people’s fights because she considers her own hopeless.”

Edér chewed on that. “We’re not hopeless. The Leaden Key is still out there waiting for us to smash ‘em.”

“And what will she do the moment she finds one of its agents? What if they don’t know how to stop her being a Watcher?”

“You’re a real star at parties, aren’t you?”

Aloth looked sheepish. “We can still do our parts. I have spoken at some length with the Steward about the sorts of monsters that have emerged from Caed Nua in other years.”

“You have?”

“I thought it best to take the precaution. Xaurips, many of them. Ogres. Elementals. Large things with large limbs.”

“So…things I can hit with my axe. Because apart from that and cooking, I’m not much help.”

Aloth’s eyebrows went up. “You don’t cook.”

“Sure I do. When there’s supplies. Ingredients. Pots and pans. No Durance trying to cook over my shoulder.”

Aloth made a quick look around. “I’d be amazed he doesn’t just drop everything directly into the flames and then damn us for not wanting to eat it.”

“So you see what I have to work with,” said Edér. “We clear out this stuff below Caed Nua, maybe I’ll fix us something special.”

“We’ll be hungry enough, anyway.” Aloth shot a glance back at where Vailond was talking to the Steward. “Do you think she’ll get some rest here?”

“Well, we’d better try.” Edér nodded. “I'll be outside.”

“And no mortal danger in sight.” For a second Aloth’s peaked face looked a little pleased. “Enjoy it.”


	53. Edér's Solution (Edér)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edér suggests a chemical solution to Vailond's sleeping problems. Vailond very nearly embarrasses herself.

It wasn’t a garden, or not much of one. The ruined chapel had a little stand of nonnative bushes that had seen better days. The lines of their tangled branches were clear between the light green shoots around the edges. Maybe with time they’d spruce up a little bit. In the meantime yellow-green climbing vines snaked through and around the branches. In the dawn light they were just untwisting from their nightly tight swirl, and promised to show starry white and pink blossoms to the sun.

He filled his pipe, tamped it down, and lit it. He pinched the match and waited for it to stop smoking before he dropped it onto the turned soil at a bush’s base. He took a deep, soothing breath. Well. He’d come this far. Gilded Vale had seen this level of excitement – the closing of Eothas’s temple, the hangings – but it had never felt like they were making progress through it. Here, here they were.

Tyrhos came trotting in less than a minute later. He whuffed and stared up at Edér as clearly as asking. Edér pressed his hand to the top of Tyrhos’s head and rubbed.

“You know,” he said, “you move in your sleep too. Difference is, you always wake up happy. You probably catch those rabbits you’re seeing in your dreams. Wish your mistress could do as well.”

“Tyrhos?” There she was. She came under the half-fallen arbor and smiled her controlled smile at Edér and Tyrhos both. “Hi.”

“Tyrhos was just criticizing my smoking habits,” he said. That was probably what the whuffing meant.

“Tyrhos gets delicate around people,” she said. She was wearing her regular leather tunic and battered breeches, with stained linen at her throat and stained boots to her knee. Her hair had a brilliant copper look, flopping just to her cheekbones. “Was I missing something exciting here?”

“No, just planning my next phase of Operation: Paper Trail.”

“Are you holding up all right?”

“Fine. How are you—” He stopped. “You’re the one in bad shape. Aren’t you?”

“We’ll fix this,” she said, which wasn’t an answer. “I could just strangle that clerk.”

“A murder conviction will definitely get my library rights revoked.”

“I didn’t say you had to be there.”

“Let’s assume she has a family to support.”

Vailond shrugged. “Fine.” She looked around and hugged herself. “Nice place here.”

He looked around with a farmer’s eye. Those bushes really were a mistake, and he knew what he would plant in their stead. Maybe he would, if this visit to Caed Nua went on for long. “It’ll grow into something gorgeous given a couple of good seasons.”

“What is a good season?” she said, eyeing him.

“Well, you start with dirt, then you get some rain and sun,” he deadpanned. “Kind of a mix there, or it won’t come out right.”

“How do you know when it’s going to be good?”

“You live through it. That’s the most truth you’re likely to find on the subject.” Did her smile come more readily over time? He hoped so. “Listen, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“Oh?”

He didn’t ask about Aloth. That would be silly. Why would he ask about Aloth? “Your, uh, sleeping troubles. Have you considered alcohol?”

Her face never moved. “I drink alcohol.”

“I meant more of it. People swear by it for getting past the passing-out part.”

“Do I look that bad?”

Edér opted not to answer.

“I can’t be off peak, Edér.”

“How do you get any safer than your own keep? Listen, I have some sonnread that isn’t going anywhere. Let me know if I should open it. I know, Kana’s got his songs and Aloth is doing gods know what, but you still look tired.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Thank you,” she said. “Maybe after dinner.”

*

“So I told him, next time you build the henhouse!” Edér laughed at his own story as loud as Vailond and the others did. The memory was fresh in his mind, just another farm story, one of many, pleasant days.

Kana jumped in with an anecdote about two commanders on one ship in his home archipelago, or however you spelled that. Their battling led to sailing a full circle over the course of two miserable weeks.

“You navigate by the stars,” said Vailond.

Kana nodded. “We are thoroughly reliant.”

“And the sun,” she said. “Me too, when I’m out away from the roads.”

“Then whaddya do when there’s clouds?” said Edér.

Vailond deadpanned. “Well, you sit real still until they go away.”

“I’m…not sure that translates to ships,” said Kana. “I shall have to try it next time.”

The evening drifted on. Vailond was definitely on the sloppy side of drunks. She leaned toward Edér and said, “You guys are great. You know that? You have been so brave, and I can’t, I can’t take care of you, but you’re here anyway, and you help, so much, and all I’ve ever wanted since this started is to be able to close my eyes but when I don’t you’re there. I can see something real, and that’s you.”

“All right,” said Edér, “you’re ready for bed. Come on. Up and at ‘em.”

Tyrhos was missing. Nobody objected when Edér gave his arm…and had to pull Vailond upright.

She tripped along at his side, out of the keep and toward the inn. “That's just so nice,” she burbled. “You’re a gentleman. I always thought so. I always told the people who figured you were a pigfucker that you probably never fucked a pig in your life.”

“And who exactly was calling me a pigfucker?”

Vailond giggled and didn’t answer.

At the entrance to the inn she swung slightly around his arm and flattened herself against him. She looked up – she was not a tall woman – and stared at his face as if trying to memorize or vaporize it. Drunk she let through an intensity that all her “Hm”s had hidden. Her pink straight-line mouth opened. He felt, suddenly, what it was like to flash a life’s chaos into a fragment of a second.

“This is where I stop,” he said, too loudly. “Get some sleep. Bet you three pfennigs you don’t wake yelling.”

The nice thing was, in the morning when they met up again, she handed him three pfennigs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edér LET ME LOVE YOU
> 
> *cough* It's fine. We're fine.


	54. Seven Levels (Kana)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kana and his new friends investigate the Endless Paths of Od Nua in search of a Rauataian scholar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long post today, at least by LVP standards.

0.

Kana told his new friends all about the scholar Gabrannos, who had come to Caed Nua in search of a tablet of priceless Rauataian history. Gabrannos was widely traveled and even more widely respected. This tablet could be a critical link in Rauatai’s heritage, and, when mingled with the history of the Endless Paths of Od Nua, the rumored tunnels beneath Caed Nua where Gabrannos had reputedly gone, well, this was an opportunity not to be missed.

* * *

1.

The basement of Caed Nua might be that of any disused castle: closets, cells, stale air, and cobwebs. Kana’s songs buffeted the dust here as he and his friends struck at spiders too big to step on but too small to shoot. Vailond tried. Kana sang precision.

He saw potential in this place. A library, a hostel, a wine cellar. Waiting for transformation, for the moment in which it would recognize itself. Perhaps he would even be there for that.

He hurried a little. Gabrannos was in this very complex. The circle started in the Deadfire would meet itself here, at long last, and the spiders, however interesting their hunting habits, were only getting in the way. He was glad for Aloth and Durance’s efficient removal of barriers of the leggy persuasion.

* * *

2.

The sub-basement of Caed Nua was where they had found Maerwald in his final madness. It had been a bitter disappointment, but whatever Kana felt about the insanity of the old Watcher, he knew Vailond felt infinitely more keenly. To her, he was the only future in sight. The only possible ending to the unstoppable visions of souls, waking and sleeping. Kana had thought about writing a song of some famous Watcher of old who had survived sane, who could offer more hope than Maerwald. The difficult thing was, he’d never found one. He wondered how the blunt ranger felt about kind lies.

Well, no. He knew. That was why he hadn’t done it yet.

In the meantime, this place was rotted storage and more spiders. “I can’t believe people left this untouched for so long,” said Kana. “We are not ten minutes’ walk from the waking world.”

Vailond grunted as she walked. Her crossbow pointed at the floor—she had long ago explained that you never pointed one at anything you weren’t willing to shoot—and she didn’t even look in the direction of Maerwald’s last stand. It was these silences, these avoidances, that most betrayed what she was thinking. Here, a disused castle seemed to be the perfect façade.

But that façade was being renewed. Even these dark places would be cleaned and illuminated. Would she pass on to another hiding place, then? Or would she stay, allowing her stronghold to be others’ home?

* * *

3.

In the dual light of magical lamp and mundane torch, Aloth and Vailond together, stranger beasts emerged from the darkness. It seemed improbable that they should live here for so long and be contented to stay in the dark. Still, Kana’s friends struck true. Magic and might, each wrapping around the other, each defending him and his party. He memorized aspects of these slimes, these shamblers, these proofs that he had lived to see wonders in the world.

Kana found himself among the rear line, singing support behind Edér, Durance, and the animals. He took Vailond’s torch when she shot, and he sang. His friends coordinated like one mind: Aloth’s ailments, Vailond and Sagani’s relentless missiles. Aloth most of all seemed to improve even as they moved from room to room. Removal from a scholar’s table had done him a great deal of good. Perhaps their other companions had, too.

They found a scaffolding up to a vast sheet of glossy green adra that had clearly been embellished and partly gilded by kith. Kana ran his fingers over the smooth surface. It was cool to the touch. “Astounding,” he said.

“That’s an eye without a mind,” said Durance, frowning at a joined pair of ridges marked by long slender golden arcs.

The ridges were enormous, the curve around them slight. “Is it continuous?” said Kana. Possibilities were blossoming. “Where does it go?”

“We have the adra fingers around the chapel outside the keep,” said Aloth. The elf’s eyes gleamed in his own silver orb’s light. He lost himself when Iselmyr surfaced, but more to the point, he lost himself when there was something to learn. “This has similar patterning. I wonder whether it continues downstairs?”

“An excellent thought!” Kana had always thought Aloth had a first-rate mind. “We must be wary!” And that is when the black ooze dropped onto his head. Edér’s bare hands ripped it free of his mouth and nose, which made the rest of the unceremonious fight quite manageable.

* * *

4.

Kana knew, in theory, that there were creatures with minds in these depths. Could any complex this enormous and this ancient fail to be colonized by those who were willing to sacrifice the sun once and for all?

What kind of person would make that sacrifice?

The answer, in blunt terms, was ogres.

Sagani sent Itumaak into the darkness with brief, careful instructions. She did not breathe right until the arctic fox returned, time and again. She was brave, but she loved, too.

Sometimes Itumaak just ran to a corner and yipped. More rarely, after conferring with his ally, he trotted away and came streaking back with an ogre in tow.

The front liners bashed at toes and ankles, but it was the arc of Kana’s other friends that did the damage here. Vailond shot with detached precision, and Aloth ravaged their foes and reinforced their friends. And Sagani? Where Itumaak pointed, she shot. Where he retreated, she covered. Where he distracted, she went for the eyes. Her recurved bow thrummed with intent, faster than Vailond, more piercing than Aloth, and far more professional than Durance. This was anyone’s image of a huntress, and she thought nothing of it but that she was doing her job.

He would make a song for her before this adventure was through. He would make her hear what everyone saw in her.

Together they conquered this place because Caed Nua truly did reach down here, as firmly and as dangerously as old Od Nua reached up, and they needed to push her influence to its deepest depths if she was to be called a stronghold again. Yes, if Caed Nua was to house a Watcher…she would be much better off than before.

* * *

5.

The fifth level housed xaurips. Dozens of them. They were intelligent enough to use weapons and helpless enough to wring regret from Kana’s heart. No one held xaurips as allies, and if Caed Nua was ever to be safe it would have to subjugate or relocate these settlements. Edér waded among them, his scale armor proof against the less precise strikes. His golden hair was partly hidden by a chain coif the Steward had found for him, and that was just as well.

He clung to the simplicity of a farmer, but he had the tactical instincts of a career soldier. He drew attention, looked temporarily swamped, and struck out of the xaurip swarm in time to watch the last one fall, pocked with bolts, arrows, and melting ice spikes. Any xaurip that tried to break past him for Kana’s line found itself kicked, bashed, or both. This was a man who would have held his god in place in time for a bomb. Did he hold himself to a standard so rigorous? Or was this dogged bravery unconscious? Dyrwoodans vocally prized their stubbornness, but in a way that served to shield a courage that would put most nations to shame.

Edér shield slammed a final quarterstaff-swinging xaurip to the ground and sank his axe between its ribs. Even as he did so he winced a little, more from distaste than pain, it seemed.

“They have xaurips,” said Durance. “But do they have a dragon?”

Everyone looked at Vailond. She just set her jaw. She had probably never seen a dragon in her life, but she was a hunter. She had to know where xaurips liked to congregate. But she looked calm. “Stay close.”

* * *

6.

The staircases here were uniform. Each one ran under an arch whose entry keystone shone pearlescent in the lamp and torchlight. Each one was broad, broad enough for the entire party side by side, though in practice they fanned behind Edér and Tyrhos. Each one crawled with warm air from below. Each one was built from cleanly hewn black stone, and metronomic steps would take you to the bottom without stumble or interruption. A will had formed these. Whose, Kana didn’t know.

He examined every wall for another sign of the adra colossus. For hints that craftsmen and kings had walked these paths, somewhere in history.

From the landing onward hung a murk so thick that Kana nearly longed for the blanket of the ooze. Vailond smeared smelly things on her torch and relit it, to no avail. Aloth sent slow orbs of silver light floating ahead, only to watch them falter and fail.

“Magran’s light in the darkness,” intoned Durance, nonsensically. Was his goddess being helpful? Had he any vision, or just defiance? “Follow me.”

Vailond touched Kana’s arm. “Everyone hold on to someone else,” she said. Ahead there was only breathing, including the uneven bellows-sweep of the man who had taken the lead. There was nothing else to see, nothing else to touch except the damp chill of stone walls. Invisibly Durance kept them moving, and they pressed on until their feet stumbled on the stairs downward.

* * *

7.

The light came back as if covers had been peeled off their eyes. Whatever lurked on the sixth level, it had let them free. The seventh was split into a series of stone circles, each one haunted by elementals, blurs floating from place to place, mostly bent on hurting. Their cores were vulnerable to physical attacks if you didn’t mind getting wet, singed, abraded, or windblasted on the way in. Vailond often hit alongside Sagani, pairs of arrow and bolt savaging the center dots. Not for the first time, Kana reminded himself not to irritate those two. As for himself, he sang songs of slowing and pooling. Edér shield bashed as if suddenly seized with a violent hatred of the entire world, and Aloth shone, seemingly free of Iselmyr but violently defending his allies all the while. Durance swung his staff like the wrath of his goddess. Sometimes Kana wondered whether Durance was godlike himself after a fashion…a receptacle for his deity’s energy.

There were other things, between the elemental stands. Skeletons, rotting bodies, some warped with some kind of texture too regular to be an accident. Someone had killed these, and nearly made something from them.

“There!” cried Kana, pointing at the distinct writing on an archway over a battered wooden door. Battered, but standing; the one inside might be safe. “Gabrannos himself must be—!”

Battered it might be, but the door was unlocked. Kana flung it open, booming for joy, “My colleague!”

An icy projectile hissed between his arm and side. Kana stumbled in, thinking dimly that he should make room for his friends. More ice, nicking his ear. He cast a look around, seeking the venerable aumaua who would aid him in uncovering the secrets of his people’s history.

There was a man who could have been Gabrannos, given life and considerably more flesh, holding a grimoire.

A skeleton mage. Of all the ends, a restless one. Kana was too stunned even to stop Durance and Edér from crushing the monster to fragments.

His greeting faltered and fell silent. He looked around. More bodies here, twisted, undone. Then, the mage, or what was left of it. “This was Gabrannos?” he said. He stared at the bones, picturing their living shape, yet finding no scrap of soul left in this room for them. “This was the great scholar I was looking for?”

“He learned something,” said Vailond. “Just…not about your history.”

Kana reared his head. “Why? He’d traveled everywhere. I found traces of his work on two separate continents! And he ends his days here? Doing these…experiments?”

Vailond looked at him blankly. “A person goes on a lot of hunts,” she said. “Only the last one was bad, Kana.”

“I took him for an inspiration,” Kana said desolately. He moved to the table the skeleton had turned from. There was a tablet there…his heart surged in its cage…broken. Broken into tiny pieces. All this time, all this space, all this, failed.

“Engwithan,” Vailond said beside him. “I can’t understand much.”

“Likely a different dialect than the one you learned in Defiance Bay,” Kana said numbly. Not to mention half the glyphs were cracked or rubbed out. It was interesting, in a detached way.

“You could take what you did find,” said Sagani.

“It seems so little, for having come so far.”

“The reward for faith generally requires more faith to accept,” said Durance.

“Seems to me you learned something about Od Nua,” said Edér. “Even if you didn’t get the exact volume.”

“There is much to consider even in a broken tablet,” said Aloth. “I could direct you to some conference proceedings.”

Kana made himself chuckle a little. He hated to be caught without cheer.

“A person goes on a lot of hunts,” Vailond repeated, and set a hand on his shoulder. “This one did have a trophy. A little one.”

“I would have preferred to retrieve the first hunter.” Kana picked up Vailond’s wrist and gently let her hand down. Her kindness was well-intentioned, but badly misplaced. “Very well, I’ll pack this up.”

Vailond swung her cloak free and spread it on the table beside the shattered tablet. Then, with a delicacy at odds with her muscular shoulders and arms, she started transferring fragments on in deft order. Kana took his place at her side. It wasn’t what he’d wanted, not really. But it was what he had, and it was more than his people had had before.

He had been on many hunts, it was true. He could not have predicted this one’s end. All this time, all this peril, all this study, all this hope…for scraps, and shards of bone. Maybe the next quest would soothe his heart. Vailond moved like this was the obvious conclusion, and he helped her work.


	55. Literacy (Aloth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond practices reading and writing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously posted on Reddit.

Vailond wasn’t given to excessive displays of passion, but when Aloth entered the study he found her at the big table looking ready. Sunlight spilled over her red hair and splashed all over their workspace as he entered.

And she straightened. “What are we reading today?”

“Writing,” said Aloth.

Vailond made a face. “Urg. Effort.”

“You do very well with this. And people take you seriously when you pen your own announcements.”

“People take me seriously when I kill and gut my enemies.”

“Different audiences,” Aloth said tactfully.

“Come sit with me.” He never did it unless she invited him. She always invited him.

And from a tray on the floor she took out inkstand, quill, penknife, blotting sand, and spare paper.

“Prepared?” he murmured, smiling, as he took the chair next to hers.

She glared at the gear as she arranged it according to her own internal logic. “Odds were good you would require effort.”

He brought up his own paper. “Here, yesterday’s sheet. Warm up by repeating yesterday’s last line.”

She did so. She bit her lip as she wrote, getting harder and harder over the course of each stroke and releasing with each lift of the quill. He watched, restraining himself from correcting her posture and fearsome squinting. She was after all his superior in both age and rank. At least she formed her letters well, keeping her wrist and forearm as he had instructed.

Nonetheless he cleared his throat. “Your lowercase ‘r’ has a high back.”

“Shit.”

Aloth had almost inured himself to her language. He handed her the practice paper. Dutifully she drew three flawless ‘r’s in a row.

“My master made me recopy the full sheet after every mistake,” he noted.

“That explains a lot,” she said without offering to do likewise. She set aside the practice paper and poised her quill above the story she had transcribed. “Back to work, Master Learning. What happened to Visz after he yelled at the spring faun? Kana says he never heard of this story, by the way.”

Nor had anyone, because Aloth had started inventing a story to keep her from untimely prying the ending out of anybody who happened by. His lessons were the sole source for this one. “It may not be in his repertoire.”

“I _will_ keep scheduling these lessons until I get to the end.”

Blunt, uncouth, and yet every single time since her first request, she invited him. Just the way he was. There were far worse prospects. “One sentence at a time,” he said primly. “‘The spring faun leaped backwards toward the edge of the deep well.’ Mind the feet on that lowercase row.”

“Feet are a massive waste of time.”

“Study well and I’ll teach you Uncials. I think you’ll get along.”

“For the record? Whoever decided to have more than one alphabet was a complete ass.” You had to look for the goodwill in those blue eyes. He saw it then in the look she snuck him before bending to her work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uncials are a font family characterized in part by no lowercase and no serifs (feet).
> 
> I have 99 chapters posted/and/or/drafted and I haven't filled out Twin Elms, so there's that.


	56. Kana's Nadir (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond tries to comfort Kana. Kana, for his part, tries to think about something else.

Vailond had had a day and a half to think about it. She went to the half-rebuilt inn. She passed up the new stairs and paused at the top, enjoying the colored light streaming through a patterned window above the landing. The hallway went about halfway down the length of the building; the rest was curtained off for work. But everything here was clean, dark brown wood, marked by sconces made from antlers – a touch Vailond had not requested, but she was a little tickled that someone had thought of it.

She knocked on doors.

“Yes?” said Sagani.

“Sorry, I was looking for Kana.”

“Haven’t heard him around here.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, do you know where Itumaak went?”

“He was outside. Did you know he has a thing against butterflies?”

Sagani rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes. I know.”

*

“Skinning your knuckles again?” said Durance.

“I’m looking for Kana.”

“And he is looking for himself. You may both be disappointed.”

“He’s within ten paces of me right this minute.”

“How worried everyone would be if you could see through these walls. Kana’s habits may _surprise_ you…they all might.”

“Uh-huh. Let’s try souls later, yeah? Good talk.”

Durance harrumphed and closed the door.

*

“Everything all right?” said Edér. “You don’t look stoic, much.” He eyed her critically. “Actually I guess you look average stoic. Everything all right?”

“I’m looking for Kana.”

“Oh. That way.”

“Thanks.”

“Vail.”

“Yes?” she said, a little too eagerly.

“Let him know we’re sorry, all right? Nobody wanted his journey to end like that.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Edér smiled. “Thanks.”

*

There was only one door where Edér had pointed, the last one before the ragged curtain of the rebuilding. Vailond knocked, then rocked back on her heels to wait.

Kana opened the door. His face looked drawn, his eyes sunken dark. “Hello,” he said, in a voice like an empty sack. “What is it?”

Here was the problem. Vailond didn’t know what to say. What did she know of grief? She licked her wounds in privacy and avoided people until she could keep her calm again. And what on Eora did she know about comforting somebody else? She wasn’t good with words. She wasn’t good with really telling whether somebody was upset. This whole thing was a mistake.

But she liked him, and out here he didn’t have anybody else.

“Talk with me?” she said.

He stared at her, dark eyes troubled. “Come in.”

She did. The room, like the others, was somewhat bare. Vailond liked the dark chest at the foot of the low four poster bed, the slight frill of the otherwise simple curtains. The window overlooked the yard, and moonlight was hemming and hawing about actually landing inside the room.

Vailond perched on the chest. “I’m very sorry about Gabrannos.”

“So am I,” he said heavily.

She traced the line of a thin dark scar across the back of her hand. “I am sorry he wasn’t what you wanted.”

“He was better than bones, once.”

“But he did a lot of good, didn’t he? When he was still a researcher? For scholars, like you.”

“He was an inspiration. I wish you could have met him with me. I read so much of his writings, I felt like I knew him. I felt like I wanted to know him.”

Without really meaning to, Vailond drew her knees up to her chin. She still didn’t know what to say, but Kana had a spirit to him and it was pooling on the floor now and that was wrong. “Kana…I don’t know a lot of books. My favorite history is the song about the harborman’s lusty wife.” He smiled faintly. Encouraged, she went on. “I don’t…understand, what you were looking for. But it means something. Coming all the way to the Dyrwood just for a glimpse, in a dungeon that wasn’t your problem…that means something.” She frowned, struggling. “Write it down. Rauatai will want to know. Won’t it?”

“Maybe you’re right,” Kana said thoughtfully. “The knowledge means something. And the way it was obtained."

“I’m still sorry.”

“I know. Thank you.”

*

Night came, and morning followed. The dining room of the inn had not yet been restored; everyone seemed to eat by the door of the great keep. A few rickety tables had been set up near the walls.

Kana ate with his usual appetite. In some very physical ways, life went on. Vailond and Edér were already seated, exchanging few but smiling words.

Kana went to the makeshift kitchen and grabbed some grits and honey. Then he sat with the others. They fell quiet when he came.

“Did I miss the terrible news?” he said, as brightly as he could.

Vailond smiled innocently. Edér just waggled his eyebrows. “Do I have to pick something?”

Vailond wasn’t making eye contact. Their moment of connection seemed to be past. But for an evening she had cared for him, like she did for all her friends.

And maybe she just needed a prompt. “Tell me about Aedyr.”

It was Edér who answered. “It’s an empire, which they will not shut up about. Cities. They lose some sometimes.” He winked.

“This does not concern you,” Kana said to Vailond. “Tell me about Aedyr.”

Her delivery was plain. “A lot of peasants for not a lot of nobility. A lot of poverty for not a lot of manor houses.”

“This is true, but you left it long ago. Tell me about Aedyr.”

She frowned. “Aedyr…still has wilderness. You can go for days without passing a house, if you’re careful, if you follow a wild trail. At night the whippoorwills call and if you can’t sleep through it you’ll be in a sorry state come morning. The sunrise on the hills is like fresh blood, Galawain’s share. He knows these ways. He is there for the conquest, the kill. The strong. The ones who aren’t afraid to be alone.” She cast a heart-wrenching smile at the wolf sniffing around the throne. “Plus Tyrhos.”

“There,” said Kana. “Now I know Aedyr.”

“Ask Aloth. He’s better with words.”

“Oh, I will. But his is a different song.”

He remembered his disappointment during the day. But not every minute. He had her to thank for that.


	57. The Drake, the Fragment, and the Crush (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond slays a drake and gets an unexpected artifact.

The road to Dyrford dragged. Vailond would have preferred the wilds, but this party wasn’t prepared for that.

The valley of drakes was at least novel.

Vailond shot things out of the air for both fun and profit. This was just bigger. She watched her companions take on swarming xaurips – the little creatures always did appreciate a dragon – while she practiced head shots on the angry beasts. They fought their way into the relative shelter of a cavern.

They paused there in the mouth of the cavern. The xaurips had stopped moving. The drakes steamed lightly in the air.

“What do you suppose is further in?” Edér said innocently.

“You don’t really want to know, do you?” said Aloth. “The smell….”

“You were never in a community of the faithful,” said Durance.

“Sure I was, but we bathed first,” said Sagani.

They did go in. They found a bigger drake. Vailond’s heart was pounding like a cannon battery. _This_ was hunting. Competition, raw and unbound by niceties.

The drake spat something as it died, something red and pulsing heat. Vailond, like a sensible person, went for the outside air. Durance, like Durance, ran in to seize the object. It was fist-sized and steamed on contact with his skin.

Vailond turned back. “What did you find?” she said unenthusiastically.

He glared from under his brows. “You should know, Watcher.”

“Don’t call me Watcher.”

He stashed the object. “We’ll discuss this. I believe our doubting Magranite in Defiance Bay may find her proof of her goddess’s power…even if she didn’t earn it.”

“But what is it?”

Durance scowled. “A fragment of the Godhammer, spirited away these many years ago.”

“Oh,” said Vailond. “Are you, um…okay?”

He smiled without warmth. “Better off than it is.”

After that? Monotonous. Vailond nursed a singed shoulder and kept walking.

She slept that evening. She dreamed of ruins, somewhere in Eir Glanfath, somewhere. Calling her.

When she woke there were voices around the fire. Sagani, Tyrhos, and Itumaak were visible as lumps. The men’s voices passed and shifted to and fro.

“…she was not the ordinary Gilded Vale type.” It was Edér. “More of a lady. She had this long yellow hair, pretty as a picture, and when she walked you’d think the mud turned solid just to please her.”

“So how long before she crossed your path?” Kana said brightly.

“What? She didn’t. I ran and hid.”

“Ah, I was that young once. The lady…wasn’t a lady, by most strict terms. But shipmasters competed to have her on their vessels for following winds and a very pleasant view from amidships.”

Edér again. “What about you? Who’s the one who was out of your league?”

“It isn’t a sport,” Aloth said nervously. “Are ye suggestin’ there’s aught competition for the likes of myself?”

“Which means he really doesn’t want us to know,” said Edér, to general laughter. “Keep your secrets. We’ve got a long road ahead.”

Vailond let out a breath. How relaxed they sounded, how happy. Edér was mentally at some other woman’s side, and she could never say she had a problem with that. She touched her short red hair. She lay knowing little, knowing only that if she met a creature like him in the wild she would let him live, because some things were too wonderful to kill.


	58. The City Recognizes Your Generosity (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond reaches a breakthrough with Edér's search for his brother, and the time of rest at Caed Nua ends.

Time passed at Caed Nua. Vailond waited for her next clue. She asked Kana to sing for her, and felt that he was happier doing so. She was tongue-tied around Edér. She studied stories with Aloth, and was surprised to find herself drawn in by tales of magical creatures and struggles from years and years before she and her bow ever came to Aedyr. She walked the grounds with Sagani and got careful judgments about the workmanship of the laborers that the Steward had helped to recruit. She watched Durance study the flames, and listened to his stories of Ashfall. She asked him if he ever wanted to write it down. He harrumphed at her and started talking about the state of her soul.

She dreamed, yes. She dreamed sometimes of ruins, and could not place them.

She didn’t like staying in one camp so long, and some nights she slept in a bedroll on the lawn beside the great adra fingers. Kana and Aloth seemed to have an understanding, for one of them often came to join her. When she woke babbling they were there, music and light, and though they looked frightened they were patient. And every time she came back inside her companions were there, and seemed happy to see her.

She saw soldiers come and go. They were hirelings like the laborers. They saluted her, which was strange, but they admired Tyrhos, too, which was endearing. Some spoke with her about their dogs, about their old castles. Tyrhos for his part was the proud guardian of the entire compound.

Days passed. She was impatient. Something occurred to her.

“Steward, do I have money?”

“Oh, yes, Watcher.”

Oh, she’d had about enough of that. “Vailond.”

“…Lady Vailond?”

“ _Vailond_. Vail, if you want.”

“I’m just not accustomed to such familiarity. Are you sure you won’t have Lady?”

Vailond threw up her hands. “Why not?” It beat ‘Watcher.’

“My lady.” She sounded relieved. “We have begun levying taxes on the nearby areas that traditionally fell under our protection, and we have hirelings to do that protecting. Given more hands, we’ll have a reliable income stream.”

“I see. Can I get two hundred gold crowns packaged up for Defiance Bay?”

“That’s…very heavy,” said the Steward. “I can have a notary write up a bank note.”

Vailond had heard of them. Rich people used them to do rich people things. “What does that do?”

“Let you carry paper instead of gold.”

“Can I still spend it?”

“By way of a bank, yes.”

“Do it. It’s a donation for the temple of Magran in Defiance Bay. Courtesy of Edér Teylecg.”

*

They went back to Defiance Bay, as Vailond had always known they had to. Everyone seemed brighter for the break. That was something.

Vailond would treasure that day. Like the day the stag gored her and she stitched up her own ribcage and staggered to finish the deal, or the day she and Tyrhos took down a trio of wolves who had decided he must die.

Yes, she would treasure it like that.

The disagreeable clerk in the ducal palace looked over Edér. Edér, for his part, was scrubbed, trimmed, and polished to a shine.

“The city recognizes your generosity,” grated the clerk, “and will of course grant you access to whatever city records you find useful.”

“I was generous?” said Edér.

“Let’s find those militia records,” said Vailond.

She still wasn’t comfortable reading, much less at this angle as Edér opened the chunky dust-scented record book and started skimming names. She knew what “Edér” looked like, and she had the pieces for “Woden,” but it wouldn’t be obvious to her upside down.

Edér’s big coarse hand stopped, one finger on a line. He read the name. He read the battle where his brother had fallen. He read on. “Readceras.” He looked up at Vailond wide-eyed. “Readceras. Why’d he fight for Readceras?”

The invaders, the followers of Waidwen the Effigy. The enemies of the Dyrwood, and the ones who would have driven with their god until the blood reached the ocean. The opposite of this kind person. “I don’t know,” she said quietly.

“We have to go to Clî—where I said. You have to come with me.”

There was no question. “Yes. Where is it? Clîaban Rilag?”

Aloth stuffed his hands into his opposite sleeves. “About four days’ march, past Dyrford Village.”

“Good enough.”

“And what of Lady Webb?” said Kana.

“I can’t just wait for her,” said Vailond. “Besides, I might remember something when we go.”

The ruins in her dream murmured at her, too. Maybe Glanfathan territory would help.

She took the lead, again. They had a long way to go.


	59. Paying Attention on the Road; The Druid (Aloth, Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloth tries to keep Vailond out of the worst of the road. Then he meets a new cause of messiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue taken from game.
> 
> cw gore (in context of eating animals).

Vailond walked quickly, lips moving, lost in her own world. Aloth had tried to strike up conversation several times, but she always seemed to drift away again. The rest of the party kept up a loud conversation that she could join at any time.

She didn’t.

She was going straight for a long, streaky puddle in the road. “Vailond,” said Aloth. “Vail!” No response but a mumble, and she was keeping up her pace. Annoyed and self-conscious, he reached over and took her hand.

Vailond stopped dead.

The party clattered to a halt and Aloth snatched his hand back. Vailond frowned at him.

Iselmyr rode the wave of attention-fearing panic. He had no idea what she’d said when he came back, only that Durance, Kana, and Edér looked amused, Sagani looked intent, and Vailond…she was just frowning.

“You were about to tread in that puddle,” he said weakly.

“Oh,” she said.

“Come with me,” he struggled, and beckoned. She joined him at his side, well clear of the yellow-brown water. They walked together, and her shorter stride scarcely seemed to matter. Aloth didn’t dare look back.

“I was ignoring you,” she said, eyeing him askance. “I’m…sorry.”

“It was your prerogative,” said Aloth.

“What’s a prerogative?”

“It means you can do what you wish.”

Her eyes snapped toward the horizon. “Oh, gods,” she whispered. “I don’t wish.”

“Shall I try harder to rouse you?”

“I don’t….” She wrung her hands and passed a thumb with unusual gentleness over what might have been their point of contact. “I don’t….” She blinked hard and kept walking. He stayed at her side. He couldn’t tell what it was she could see. He likely never would.

*

The land was partly forested, easily rising and falling. It reminded Vailond of old Aedyran haunts. Fluffy white clouds studded the sky, and blue and pink wildflowers were scattered over the tall grasses. The road was beaten earth losing what looked like a long-standing argument with the springing turf.

Voices. Even as she clung to this world, she couldn't stop the voices.

After some debate the party began to eat lunch on their feet. Edér was anxious to keep going, and so was Vailond, and everyone else would just have to deal.

They wound around a big hill and saw, some ways away, an orange-haired orlan stooped over a carcass that could only be a deer.

He stood and noticed them. One high-pointing ear twitched. The other seemed to be missing, circled by the strap for a messily decorated eyepatch. He planted his feet, set his fists on his hips, and awaited them.

They were no more than a loud conversation away when Tyrhos darted in front of Vailond and growled.

He mostly seemed upset by Iselmyr and visions. Was this another Awakened soul? Vailond touched Tyrhos’s neck. “Tyrhos, whoa, easy! It’s all right. Look. My name is Vailond, traveler.”

“Your wolf is insightful,” said the orlan. His ragged ear twitched out of sync with the stump of the other. “Share my kill, won’t you?”

She looked at his short arms, his little hands, and the clean knife stuck under his belt. “You didn’t kill that. A lion or a drake did.”

“Close! A staelgar. No longer in the way. Want some?” He picked out a pink gobbet and swallowed it, then reached into the dead deer and pulled out a long rope of slick flesh.

“You’re trying to feed me a deer’s shit tube,” said Vailond.

He grinned. “Beauty and brains. All right, so the viscera was a joke. Galawain chose a fitting end for this fine animal.” He bowed his head to the carcass, started about two seconds’ chant, and stopped. “Pardon me, I shouldn’t pray with my mouth full.” One more dramatic chew, then a slurp.

“As long as it bleeds I’m not sure Galawain much cares,” said Vailond. “He gets his portion from my kills.”

“A real devotee, huh?” He brushed orange hair free of his eyepatch. It had a weird kind of eye on it. “As a child, I would worship Galawain in hopes of being a great hunter, but I have since come to know Wael, He Who Sees And Is Not Seen.”

The god should be paying him for the publicity. “Easier to sleep at night with Galawain. You know where he lies.”

“And when he moves. Admirable, if your talents are for the skills he happens to champion. Me, I’ve learned as much as I can from the druids of my circle. And I wouldn’t mind talking with someone who knows her throat from her cloaca.”

“Deer don’t have cloacas.”

“More’s the pity. Are you going near Twin Elms any time soon?”

Sagani cleared her throat. “That’s one end of the search space the last ‘Watcher’ gave me.”

“Which may or may not be true,” said Vailond. “We might, I don’t know yet.”

“Indirect, yet intriguing.” The orlan cut an elaborate bow. “Hiravias, pleased to meet you.”

“Vailond. This is Tyrhos.” Tyrhos growled. “Easy, Tyrhos. Do you know the country here?”

“Like the back of my furry form’s paw.”

“I’ll pay you for guidance to Clîaban Rilag.”

“I know it. Dyrford’s in the way. Might be a place to resupply.”

“Yes, that will be helpful.”

“Are you sure about this?” said Edér.

“Better than running in the dark,” said Vailond. “Any specific problem?”

“No,” said Edér. He looked at the orlan. He looked at the horizon. “Nothing specific.”

Tyrhos snapped. Vailond frowned. “Easy, friend. He’s a druid. Druids are friends to people like us. They get into the same trouble.”

“A…fur trader, to put it legally? Well I would trust your skills in—Aedyr, by your accent?” Hiravias smiled slyly, eyeing her companions. “I count two wilderness and four city. Do you have to take them?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. We’ll go slow for the old ones.”

Durance harrumphed. “I walk for a living, sprout. Over coarser ground than this.”

“From the state of your sandals, I’m not surprised. Very well, lead the way!”


	60. The Aedyran Lord and His Daughter (Sagani)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sagani begins a new hunt: a missing noblewoman in the town of Dyrford.

Sagani had been to places like Dyrford Village before. There were too many such places in the Dyrwood. Wide roads, heavily churned, but unkempt building corners, bony beasts of burden, quiet cold shoulders from strangers to passersby. Here as elsewhere, the Hollowborn crisis laid a pall. These people had given up. After fifteen years, who wouldn’t?

There was a guardsman at the bridge leading into town. He stepped in the party’s way. “Hold, strangers,” he said. “We don’t want any trouble here.”

“Whaddya know,” said Edér, “neither do we.”

“Can we pass through?” said Vailond.

The guard looked over Vailond with all the penetration and nuance of a sledgehammer. And, oddly, Aloth. “So you’re not with Lord Harond?”

“Who?” Vailond said blankly. She was not one for sophisticated games. Some days her calm obviously covered thoughts, and sometimes her stone face was as good as its description.

The guard, for his part, seemed pleased. “Maybe you can talk to him. He’s some nobleman coming through, says he’s missing his daughter. If you can spot her and get him to move on the entire town will owe you a drink.”

Vailond backed up a few steps and turned away before rolling her eyes. “A missing noblewoman. How tragic.”

“You’re noble now,” Edér said mildly. “And we’d come for you.”

Vailond quieted at that.

They took the guard’s directions to the inn, which was large enough to suggest Dyrford actually got traffic. Sagani kept Itumaak close by her side. The fox was looking around, black-eyed and wary, and he stayed close to her legs.

When they got inside the inn there was a burly main in chainmail at the bar, blustering at an exhausted-looking innkeeper. He said something in threatening tones and went to heel by a lean harsh-featured elf in Aedyran clothing that made Aloth look provincial.

Vailond walked right up to him. “They tell me your daughter is missing.”

You could hear the spark when he switched focus to a new audience. “That’s right. Aelys. The light of my life. If you can be of more help than the…” he sneered toward the innkeeper…“locals…I’ll see that you’re amply rewarded.”

Vailond seemed happy to leave it at that. It was Kana who said, politely, “Do you think we could get more evidence to go on?”

A young woman traveling for an arranged marriage. Sagani decided that, wherever she’d gone, she’d meant to disappear. She herself wouldn’t be above climbing out a window to get out of a pairing she hadn’t agreed to. Technically her marriage had been a pairing she hadn’t agreed to, but Kallu was special.

The villagers weren’t exactly in a mood to cooperate. Edér and Kana asked far and wide, but most of Dyrford just wanted to shut up already about Lady Aelys Harond. Either Vailond had a thing about missing women or she’d really been hit hard by Edér’s mild reproof, but either way she charged on with determination. This place might be tired of Aedyran elves, but Vailond wasn’t of the common run. For all of a depressing circuit around a muddy ring, she even stepped forward herself to ask people where the woman might have gone. But Vailond and Aloth’s elven features and Aedryan accents instantly lumped them with the unpopular Harond.

Sagani had had less pleasant hunts, but not many. She wanted to give up, but if there was a chance the woman had run into trouble in the first moments of her escape…well, they couldn’t just leave her there.


	61. The Woman With the Knife (Durance)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Durance watches as Vailond meets a new acquaintance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw violence, a single line referring to a specific act of brutality

Vailond was chattering with Edér and Sagani, something meaningless about the village of Dyrford. Its streets were ugly, its people defeated and trying not to show it. Durance could feel pity, but opted not to. This was an old song moaning among the roads.

It was Kana who greeted townspeople, shopkeepers, laborers in a hurry. It was he who smoothed through introductions and asked about the elven girl. It was he who got directions to the curriery where the girl had last been seen.

Vailond wanted more evidence, and more information on where she was going. She was learning, slowly. She crashed through life like one of the animals she hunted, but her mind was developing. She would need that in the trials ahead.

They reached a garden, and at the path into the garden sat a seam-faced peasant woman leaning over a basket. She seemed to be cutting vegetables. Vailond looked onward…then, came back. And stopped, bending toward the woman. For a few seconds, then many seconds. Lost again, as she had been a hundred times on the road…but lost with someone. Durance burned to know what communion the Watcher had with this hag.

“Vail?” said Aloth, looking intent. “Vailond?” She didn’t seem to hear him. If she could, would she be able to move?

“Vail,” said Edér. “Tell me you’re not running away with your new best friend. Or standing dead still with your new best friend.” But she was. Lost to the world, not even whispering to the creatures of her visions, just…standing, looking at this woman, frozen in place.

Durance did not move to interfere. This was clearly a problem Vailond was meant to face. The peasant woman was a mental trial, and…

No. In a fit of faltering faith he flew forward and seized the kneeling woman’s arm. Vailond would not fail here. Not to some kitchen drudge who saw things in her Durance couldn’t.

The woman moaned and fell in Durance’s grip. He let go. “Wandering, woman?” He stood over her. “You’re strong enough. Sit.”

“Durance,” said Edér. “Do we need to rough up little old ladies?”

“Watcher,” the woman said in a low, desolate tone.

No one had anything to say to that.

Except Edér. He gestured with his pipe. “So did everyone but me and Aloth just know that already?”

“You want to come with me,” Vailond said as if preoccupied.

“Beware the mind you cannot crawl out of,” said Durance. “A cipher may break even you.”

“What?” said Edér.

Vailond was frowning at the woman. “You need help. And I can’t help you.” She turned away.

The woman raised one hand. Tiny chimes jingled from a silver bracelet. Vailond stiffened and turned back. “There’s no time,” she said. “I’m working.”

The woman moaned. “I can help you.”

Aloth wrapped his hands over opposite forearms. “What is this woman to you?”

Vailond spared him a look. “I don’t know yet.”

“Can you pull out?” said Edér.

“I…don’t know yet. Come with me, Mother.”

“You’re being foolish,” said Durance. “Do not compromise your soul for a stranger.”

Vailond snarled like a petulant child. “My soul is here,” she said, thumping her chest. “You can’t pull it out.”

Durance had seen ciphers weaponized. Soul readers, soul reavers. Past lives were ammunition and honed blades. Horror and impotence, visions and fears. A powerful enough cipher could string a soul like a noose, and pull. What did a Watcher have? A wider gaze, or a deeper? Fine eyes were no defense against a knife to the face.

Maybe this journey, not her introduction, was the trial. Who better than a cipher to lay bare the strength of a soul?

Yes. His interference was not the problem. It was perfectly appropriate. He had done the right thing. And the new trial would require close attention.

Ten minutes later he looked up at the old woman who had caught Vailond’s eye, and thought very little of it.


	62. The Key and the Stairs (Aloth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond steals a key that leads beyond where they suspected in Dyrford.

The group didn’t quite coalesce after Vailond’s surprise addition. People shifted, edged here and there, didn’t exactly agree to keep following. Aloth stood still. He couldn’t contribute anything about this aged stranger.

Vailond was standing facing the woman. Her lips were moving.

Hirivias leaned toward Aloth. “Did she catch alcoholism from the Dyrwoodans?”

Edér eyed him. “You realize alcoholism isn’t catchi…huh. Never thought about it that way before.”

“She drinks less than me,” said Sagani. “For what that’s worth.”

“She sometimes slips into reverie,” said Kana. “I always look for souls…until today, I never spotted one.”

“It’s currently in a normal body,” said Edér. “That don’t count.”

Hiravias grinned. “So she’s crazy, but she’s sober crazy. I’ve had worse companions. And I like a woman who barely cooks her meat.”

Aloth’s lip curled. “That is almost certainly an innuendo, but I’m not going to try to decipher it.”

In only twenty-four hours Hiravias seemed to have taken a lively interest in Vailond. Everything he liked was part of Vailond’s feral side, the part Aloth couldn’t follow. Vailond had taken to washing her hands and face, allowing other people the mess of preparing her meals, chewing with her mouth closed. This should be the standard for any kith, but in Vailond it was a matter of effort, of overcoming her own ways under the influence of people who, while not all couth, were at least more accustomed to kith company than animal. The druid could happily tear all that down. He wondered, oddly, whether she could ever be attracted to an orlan. This wasn’t his problem. It made no difference to him whom she was attracted to. He was just concerned at the sanitation of having two raw-meat eaters in the party.

Kana led the way into the ruined tower where the town currier lived. Said currier looked wounded when Kana mentioned Lady Aelys. “An ogre took her. Biggest I ever saw. You know, he’s been stealing pigs, too. He’s living in the mountains north of town. I don’t know…I hope she’s all right.”

“I should hope so,” said Aloth. “Come. There’s nothing else we can do here.”

Vailond seemed to wave, but when he looked at her she was looking innocently toward that peasant woman. All right, maybe Hiravias wasn’t the one Aloth had to worry about.

They went back to the inn. Lord Harond snapped at Vailond, and Vailond calmly said that his concern should be for the ogre, but they would look in the morning.

In the morning, however, Vailond got up very early, and did not go to look for an ogre.

“Is Kana ever coming?” she said sharply in the common room.

“I could go get him,” said Edér.

“We’re running out of time. Do it.”

In time everyone ended up downstairs, even the peasant lady that Vailond seemed to have adopted. Together Vailond led them to the currier’s ruined tower.

It was barely sunrise, but the two craftsmen were already there, moving around, opening containers, beating out piles of straw. Vailond brushed Aloth’s elbow as she passed and he tensed, ready to drape darkness over anything she opposed.

She held up a key. “Where does this go?” she said calmly.

The currier and his apprentice drew knives and charged.

Aloth raised both hands and hurled his grimoire at the currier. It hit his knife hand just as he reached Vailond. She had a better knife out. Durance and Hiravias efficiently wrestled the men down, and Vailond found rope for them to bind. They were screaming incomprehensibly, staring at the door to the back room.

“So…not just leather,” said Edér.

“No,” said Vailond. She used the key. For a second the back room did just look like a lot of drying leather sheets. Then she saw the lower stone door and used the key again.

An uneven staircase spiraled into the dark. “Here,” she said unnecessarily. “Light?”

She meant Aloth, and he was pleased to create a floating silver lamp and send it out in front of her. “One of our more wall-like friends?” he said diffidently. Edér stepped down.

“There’s an entire cave system,” he called over his shoulder. “Stay together. If I disappear please come after me. Kana first, he’s pretty sturdy.”

“Yes, let’s put the strong ones at the _bottom_ of the pit,” said Durance. “Perhaps you stack.”

Aloth could ignore the byplay. He looked instead at a ragged banner on the side of the cavern. “Is that a Skaen sign?”

The tension ripped through the party. “Sorry,” said Edér, “are we still missing a girl? Because….”

Vailond pushed up beside Aloth. “Let’s hurry.”


	63. The Old Woman in the Shadow (Grieving Mother)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Grieving Mother attends her new allies as they descend into a Skaenite lair.

Shadows, swirling. The past malleable. Figures passing into and out of it. The Watcher moved like a ship with a rudder, the only displacement, the only direction since She had left the Birthing Bell. The Watcher saw Her true face. The Watcher called Her Mother. A midwife so many times…a mother? Darker shadows, further beneath.

Dyrford was swaddled and smothered with cursed breaths, the shadows of the Hollowborn. She knew only one cure, one soul, one mother, one act, repeated ever only one at a time. It required focus and nearness to warp an eye into seeing a soul that wasn’t there. She had not hands enough for the world.

Souls, swirling. She could not deceive the Watcher. There was a soul too strong, an eye too discerning. In every current a knowledge, in every veil a piercing light. Against that She could hide, needed to hide, yet needed to be held up and known. A child raised to the sun. She had fashioned Her chimes to comfort mothers and children; neither one Herself, maybe, darkness in these corners, perhaps never, yet She took comfort as well.

They sank now. She watched the dark symbols on the walls. When the first humans charged from the shadows She lashed at them, breaking down their minds, blunting their resolve and allowing Her companions to disable them. It was coarse work, nothing like the weaving meditation of Her calling. But She could be useful, and the Watcher accepted Her.

The woman, the girl, the Aelys. For many years She had watched over those who had no one else. How many lost girls had come to Her for comfort and guidance, for aid in the transitions of life? A wedding veil could be a caul. It was not the same as childbirth, but it was the same as coming into a new world. It was true that She might be able to sense this Aelys. Lost in the darkness, dragged by animals in clothing. Frightened, alone, alone with these shadowed people and their ragged hoods and their crude knives and their stinking fear. For even the wildest of their attackers were afraid.

Darkness. The sorcerer’s magical lamp illuminated only feet, not minds. The Watcher’s friends were strangers to Her. The one with the fox, woman, was marked by sorrows, and maybe to gain her favor She could smooth those away, send those babies to where the sorrowful ones went in memory. The others? Men, killers, strangers. She could not reveal Herself to them. They followed in the Watcher’s wake, but She had nothing to say to them.

They spoke, thundering staccato, finding clues. Skaen was a brutal impulse, icon of slaves, betrayals, and schemes in the dark. He was the creature of the depths, utterly opposite Hylea who blessed births. And he was everywhere here. She spread Her thoughts elsewhere, hoping to make contact with Aelys, hoping that there was something to make contact with. She was no stranger to death. Yes, even She had failed, weeping under the Bell. Souls were torn here, more ragged the further they got. She hugged Herself and did not abandon the Watcher. This place flowed deeply, and though She did not know where it would flow to, She knew that its depths were where She needed to be. The Birthing Bell stood behind, a perverse lighthouse, the direction to row away from.

Every now and then She surfaced and lanced a mind. The present, malleable. She did not understand. But She followed.


	64. The Blood Pool And What Happened After (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond finds an unexpected source of power, and has the chance to apply it to the case of a missing woman.

“This is fascinating,” said Aloth.

Vailond peered around his shoulder. The brown book he had opened was written in a bold, straight-stick hand that looked kind of like normal writing. She could figure it out if given a few minutes. “What is?”

He tapped the margin. “Writings of the followers of Skaen. Do you know how rare it is to find one of these intact? If…slightly stained.” He stashed it in his satchel, then looked up at the people gathered around the split table in this half-finished cave cutout beside the main corridor. In a tone very unlike his usual diplomacy, he said, “If anything grabs you, kill it.”

It felt like they had been down here for hours. They weren’t even yelling, because Skaenites might just kill Aelys if they heard a rescue party coming. Skaen was a disease of civilized people. She’d never met a follower in the open honest woods.

They pressed onward.

They came to a huge door cut with runes sort of like the ones in the book. Vailond toyed with the lock mechanism, but it was a real lock, complicated. Durance came up beside her.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” he said in a strange voice.

“Just get us in there,” she said.

He slipped out lockpicks and set to work. It took him the better part of a minute, huffing and swearing as he went. Finally, the door opened.

The cavern was high and broad and brown and it stank. She heard someone gagging behind her. Down the center, glistening, lay a pool of something that was not water.

She found herself at its edge, staring at all the blood. It ran down half the length of a shortbow’s reach and its stench was in her lungs, pressing against her stomach. There was intelligence in this blood. There was an intent. This wasn’t the clean kill of Galawain, this was sluggish wounds in a bed of filth. This was Skaen, the vengeance in the dark.

It called to her. She listened despite herself. It whispered of new power, forbidden knowledge, if she would just let it consume one of her companions.

Or all of them.

Vailond stared at the pool. It was red, fresh red, thick and gooey, covered in a shiny thin layer of oil that gave it the impression of moving. Souls screamed inside it, indistinct but very, very numerous. Unbidden came images. Edér, drowning, and her strength gaining. Aloth, blood thick in his throat, and her clarity of mind leaping to new levels. Durance, silenced, and her comprehension expanding beyond the confines of her education. Hiravias, a staelgar five times its own size, his limbs sinking and hers strengthening. It went on. There was an ongoing note of hunger, of desire so powerful she had to tell herself it wasn’t hers.

“We need to—” Her lips were stiff. They struggled, but against life in death they would all be helpless and she would taste the consequences. “We go. Now.”

Promises, silken, blood not on her cheeks in service but on her lips in perfect fulfillment. She stumbled toward the far door.

Edér was there in a heartbeat, bearing her up. “I get the impression you don’t like this room much.”

“We go,” she managed.

*

Aelys was alive.

This turned out to be the plan of the least twitchy of the Skaenites. She was to be remolded through torture and sent back to slaughter her…uncle. And the rest of his family. Why? Because Skaenites liked murdering people in creative ways.

No, Aelys was not Harond’s daughter on the way to a wedding. She was Harond’s niece, and carrying his child. Vailond wished she could be surprised. There was a reason she’d left Aedyr.

She thought about feeding the Skaenites who had tortured her to that pool, but decided that dragging them that way wouldn’t be worth the effort. She killed them.

“I can help,” the Grieving Mother said softly. “I can take the past from her memory.”

Vailond didn’t have to hesitate. “Do it.”

“Aw,” said Edér as the Mother came to trembling Aelys’s side. Vailond kept getting pelted with these little reminders that nobody saw the Mother the way she did. She wasn’t really sure whether this was normal for a cipher but it was kind of disturbing.

Mother backed away from the young woman. Aelys looked at them all. “I don’t understand,” she said hoarsely. “What happened?”

A certain kind of man. “Kidnapping,” Vailond said firmly. “Let’s get you upstairs.”

“There’s a temple back where we came into town,” said Edér. “Might give her some direction. Just a thought.”

“A good one.” Aelys was about to get a fresh start. How many people could say that?

Still, just to make sure it wasn’t too hard for her, Vailond lured Harond outside, beat him bloody with some anatomical focus, and took his things to bring to Aelys for supply on her journey. She didn’t stick around for thanks. If their places were reversed, Vailond would want the alone time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That little encounter surprised the heck out of me. Very atmospheric.


	65. The Key's Representative in Dyrford (Aloth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloth takes stock of the situation, especially regarding Vailond and her quest against the Leaden Key.

The Dyrford inn was silent. Tyrhos was asleep. And in the dark, beside the sole bed, Aloth was winding down the distracting lights, easing their muted display into gentle darkness, finishing Vailond’s silent lullaby. She breathed easily.

He thought.

Aloth was hiding things from the short muscular red-haired blue-eyed wilderness-hardened fearless determined sleeping elven woman. Things that would destroy the aegis she had extended over him since their first day in Gilded Vale.

He didn’t give her his spellbooks when he offered her reading material. And he had charged more than one passing traveler to seek signs that he alone knew would reveal the Leaden Key.

Oh, and he was a member of the same.

It had been a chance to study and practice the arcane. It had promised to take him far from Aedyr, maybe from Iselmyr. (That didn’t work out.) It worked toward curbing the excesses of animancers, whom he had never trusted.

He had been sent to Gilded Vale to watch. He watched the hanging tree. He watched a Hollowborn child’s vacant stare. He watched a woman who could see souls.

But his handler never responded to him. Maybe she was dead. He had not completed a report since he’d met Vailond.

Now Aloth took stock. The horrors of Heritage Hill and the sanitarium were not driven by animancers. They were driven by the Key itself. Was this the necessary reckoning for animancy’s excesses? Why did his mouth taste like ash in considering it?

If he found a leader, what would he tell them about Vailond, who undid their weaving like a queen of legend?

She had put a stop to those horrors. She had turned him to that task and it had been the right thing to do, both before he knew it was the Key and after. But sooner or later they would destroy her. Oh, she could fight, but the Leaden Key had numbers, and against that she had only a stern veneer and an untamed heart.

Why did the Leaden Key want to ruin her? She was no animancer, no madwoman clawing knowledge out of places better left alone. She was innocent. Savage in her way, but innocent of this. Her only stake was a curse the Leaden Key had had a hand in. Did that make her his enemy? Was he betraying the first group that had ever accepted him…for this, this strange clangorous group that had somehow accepted him?

Vailond was sleeping soundly. She trusted him that much. He leaned over her and, without meaning to, inhaled. Faint sharp musk, no surprise. He pursed his lips over her smooth tanned forehead. And stopped.

She was blunt, merciless, violent and only skilled in violence. And yet, there was more, more loyalty, more courage, more perseverance…she was not soft and she was not soft-spoken, nor any other feminine charm, but she was sincere, head to heel. When she let him into her room alone at night it meant as much as a day of proclamations.

Yes. As a person she had many virtues. She dealt in caretaking, in listening to him like he had first devised language just for her, in…totally ordinary things.

He felt her warmth haunting his lips, and he didn’t close the distance.

Instead he sat up. Yes, she was merciless. If she knew about him she wouldn’t understand. He wanted to be on her side, but she would never accept that he had been on the other. Maybe…if he could find the reason why the Key was doing this, if he could harmonize their needs….

Would a Watcherless Vailond even like Aloth? She had been desperate, not friendly. Maybe they were natural enemies. The man who respected souls the way they were and the woman who wanted nothing more than to get away from them. There was no overlap. Yet the thought of leaving her side broke his heart.

With this thought he stood. She slept. His duty had been served. He slipped out into the hallway toward his own room, soundless. Not because he was afraid of waking harm, but because he wanted her comfortable. Now and for a long time to come.


	66. An Absence of History (Hiravias)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiravias settles in with Vailond, who has no idea on some things.

The Lady Vailond Whatever was a cipher. Not a cipher cipher, but the kind of cipher you ciphered over until you could decipher her. It was different.

The wolf Tyrhos adored her. Hiravias knew enough about the preferences of bonded animals to know what that was worth. Tyrhos didn’t seem like a crazy wolf. He seemed pleasantly alert and good and very, very loyal to this chunky little elven woman.

But she wasn’t like the rangers of Hiravias’ clan, either. She deferred to city people. She exercised table manners, even with barely-cooked meat by the fire. She expressed genuine concern for total strangers near and far. It was like she had her own interspecies clan around her, closer-knit than any he’d known.

Well, he hadn’t gotten kicked out of this one yet. Maybe their standards were just that low.

He was reclining by a leggy stand of forsythia behind Dyrford’s inn. Vailond popped her head around the corner and gave him a controlled smile. “No rain last night?”

“These shrubs are enough to protect me. You might fit, but I can’t speak for the rest of them.”

“No, they’re indoors people. Listen…your clan is Glanfathan.”

“That’s what they keep telling me.”

“We’re going after some ruins. I…had a vision, sort of, and then there’s an old battleground. From the Saint’s War.”

“My clan has no claim on anyplace near here. You may find locals, though.”

“Will you help us negotiate with them?”

“Negotiate? To get access to a place your people have already desecrated once?”

“I’m Aedyran. I had nothing to do with the Saint’s War.”

“Excuse me, have you heard of the Broken Stone War? No?” She looked blank. “What do they teach you in Wild Woman of the Woods school?”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“Me? I…I mean, everyone knows.” He considered her. “First things first. Yes. I’ll help you. Gods know I don’t owe them anything. But if we can sneak around, that’s what we’re doing.”

“Oh, agreed.” She paused. “What was this about a war?”

“Aedyr. Eir Glanfath. Two hundred years ago. Aedyran settlers pushed homeland Glanfathans past the edge.”

“No! I remember! Maerwald’s visions! The things they did to each other….” She was far away. Her face twitched in increasing distress. “Yes, I remember. There were monsters.”

“There are monsters in a lot of places. A generation later an Aedyran commander set fire to a forest to prevent the Glanfathan retreat.”

Her eyes were wide, just darker than sky blue. “The trees,” she said. “Black, as far as the eye can see. And ciphers…nobody understood them. The fear was terrible. Flames behind you, sorcerers before. The Glanfathans thought this would be their last stand.”

“But it wasn’t,” said Hiravias. “Where are you getting all this from? You said you didn’t know about the war. Who is Maerwald? Why are you looking through me like that?”

She looked a little scared. “Maerwald was a Watcher, the only other one I ever knew. He had these visions of his past lives. Of being a soldier, a rapist, a bastard. I just didn’t know where that fit until you started talking. I see souls, not just my own, stories in history. I can go back into them if I want, until I have the memories of a hundred people.” She looked haggard. “Or more.”

“That sounds very exciting, but when you go take a shit are you alone at least?”

“No,” she said. “I’d like to be.”

Birds were singing. The world was turning. Hiravias didn’t know what to say.

She seemed to come back from a long way away. “Listen, I didn’t mean to drag you into a Skaen cult.”

“It was certainly something to tell the circle about. I note that your clan has no problem with a staelgar ally.”

“Or an orlan one. Thank you.”

“You don’t have to be nice to me, you know. Admit it, it tires you to be a people person.”

Her cheek twitched. “It tires me to be a Watcher.”

“I’m not talking about sleep. I know what the fifteenth day on a long-shot hunt over a cold trail looks like. And you’ve been at this more than fifteen days.”

She chewed on this. She let her lip out from beneath her teeth. She didn’t like being looked at. “Don’t tell the others.”

“As you wish, Watcher.”

“Don’t. My name is Vailond. Unless you want me to call you Staelgar?”

He winced. “Point well taken.”


	67. The Vision at Clîaban Rilag (Vailond, Grieving Mother, Edér)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond finally reaches the site of Edér's brother's last stand, and this is what she found.

They left town that afternoon. Clîaban Rilag was supposed to be under a day’s march away. Vailond walked with the sun on her face and things, faces, voices. Some days they quieted when she woke up. Some days they just kept going, like thayns' guards she couldn’t get rid of. She listened, but she never knew the right thing to say.

Something brushed her elbow. Vailond jumped. The Grieving Mother fixed those vast gray eyes on her. “Let me take them.”

No. Bad things belonged to you, you didn’t just give them away. Who knew what would happen to these souls if a cipher got in the way? She hadn’t slept since midnight.

“Shut them up,” Vailond muttered, and suffered Mother’s hand on her arm once more.

Things were better by sunset. Mother looked thoughtful, and Vailond asked after her health and got a polite dismissal. Instead Vailond left Kana with the cooking and slipped out to a ridge that overlooked the place they were all here for. Edér was there. She joined him at his side as he looked down the road into the haze of grass and brake.

He raised his eyebrows and looked down at her as if surprised she had found him. “Smoke,” she said, pointing at his pipe.

“Right,” he said.

“Not sleepy?”

“We’re almost there.” He smiled. “I don’t sound _too_ excited, do I?”

“Just excited enough.” She looked out at the low country and its disappearance into the dark. “Want me to bring Tyrhos?”

“Aw, let him sleep. Thanks, though.”

She tried to think of something else to say. Something witty, civilized, attractive. Her mind failed.

Edér pulled his pipe from his lips. “Almost there,” he said again. He looked down at her. “No matter what happens, I want you to know…this was worth it.” He touched her arm lightly and walked away.

The moon was rising. Vailond stood still, and resented the night air for trying to brush away the impression of his hand.

*

Glanfathan ruins. They had them in Aedyr, too. More trouble than they were worth, given the hunters who claimed them. Vailond had a healthy respect and an old knife wound on the subject.

But Edér wanted something here. Vailond sent Tyrhos ahead to scout, and started looking for battle remnants.

“Think I got something,” Edér called eagerly. “Wait, no. Stick.”

The party scattered. Sagani kept her nose down beside Ituumak. Aloth stopped every few steps to focus on his own steepled fingers. The disquieting, grieving mother seemed to be interrogating the air as she walked. Hiravias seemed to focus on picking his nose. Durance watched. Kana hummed, maybe light or sharpness of mind or something dirty in Rauataian. It was a nice sound.

“Wait, I've got—oh. Never mind.” Edér was out front and center, lost to her like she must be to him during her lapses. There would be no chatting with him.

Tyrhos crashed through a bush and bounded to present something to Vailond. It was a steel frame, half a circle with a sunburst and a plant leaving the center. It had a little cap like it was meant to top a stick, or a flagpole.

“Mother,” called Vailond. “Can you read this?”

Edér jogged up. “See something?” he said breathlessly.

Vailond handed it to the Mother.

Edér’s eyes followed. “Uh, I appreciate the idea, but this nice stranger lady probably isn’t a cipher.”

Again, everyone acted like Grieving Mother was a mundane and decrepit crone. Maybe for a few misty moments, but she was plainly different now. Graying but luminous and upright.

She took the frame from Vailond’s hands. She closed her eyes.

She opened.

*

A cold day, a bitter wind. She would follow the Watcher here, but She wished She had brought another shawl. So often Her focus was with others, faces from the past, children drawing all attention and will to themselves in their wild innocence…it seemed strange that She would find someone who let Her be selfish.

“That’s the kind of thing they had topping the standards of Readceras,” the tall man said eagerly. There were not chimes enough in this world to soothe him. She did not make eye contact.

She took the sun in one hand. It whispered to Her, things it had not gotten to say in the riverbank while it was covered in silt and the outermost ripple of a far distant surrender. Many souls had left their impression on this proud artifact.

She took the Watcher’s hand. “Focus,” She said, knowing that in an effort of this magnitude Her word would sound like Her true voice even to the ignorant around Her. It was a necessary evil.

She had seen many things as a cipher, both before and after Her gifts had come under control. She had been emptied and used, pierced and voided. Yet the feeling when the Watcher sought through Her mind was indescribable. The Watcher saw something beyond Her senses, used Her gift for something more obscure and more valuable than She had ever woven. She wished She could watch. But She stayed still and trusted that this woman would not leave Her riven.

The Watcher’s passion seared Her fingertips, needled Her eyes. The Watcher wanted, furiously, and though her power was the only thing that could sift Woden Teylecg’s soul from the cacophony of the broken standard, at the same time her energy threatened to overwhelm all sense.

Then, in a second, the other presence in Her mind was gone. She opened Her eyes. The Watcher was bent over double, clutching her stomach.

The blond one stooped, more to ask than to aid. Personally She did not pretend to understand the war. The Watcher spoke of prophets and grand marches, armies full of men as tall and as dangerous as this. A man with a halo and a terrible legacy. The blond one spoke back, demanding. Mothers wept when their children were stillborn, when no chime, no bell could ring soul back into the closest of bonds, but he did not weep when the memory came dead. She could turn the impressions of mother and child, but only when there was a mind to receive those impressions. This, this fragment of an artifact, was not a mind, nor would ever be. She could not weave it a new story. Woden Teylecg had turned away from the muster at Defiance Bay, met a prophet named Waiden, and sworn service, and died here.

The blond one was flushed and trembling. “No. There’s more! There has to be more! What did he talk about with Waidwen?”

“I can’t hear them,” said the Watcher. She pressed her hands to her ears and leaned into Her ready arm. The contact steadied Her, and maybe her as well. “I couldn’t hear,” said the Watcher. “I don’t know.”

“You have to know!”

“I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely. “This is as far as I go.”

A mother without a child, a soul’s receptacle unexpectedly empty. Grief and fury warred on his face, and the Watcher’s pain was rising apace. She tapped the Watcher’s arm. “His brother. I can soothe it away.”

The Watcher’s eyes widened. Then as in most encounters, She felt that the Watcher was looking through Her, into depths She had suppressed. Now she looked afraid of what she saw.

“Don’t take that from him.” The Watcher swallowed hard. “I think he needs it.”

“Vail.” The blond one huffed out a breath. He was a man, mostly unfamiliar, violent in his affections and violent in whatever this was. But the veins in his temples were receding. “I spent fifteen years with a rumor on my back, and after I met you all I ever found out was that it’s true. But you won’t tell me why.”

“Correct on all counts,” the Watcher said wearily. “I just…I. I’m going into those ruins. You don’t have to…you don’t. I’m not…maybe I’ll hear something else. I…”

The aumaua was a surprise, a gentle voice. “You’ve made your apology,” he said in soft tones. He continued, words of comfort, words explaining the ordeal anew. He did not reach into the soul, but She felt like he would do well if he could.

He sang a low bass marching song as they worked toward distant statues. She moved in discomfort, sensing the call that the Watcher was answering. The clouds pressed close overhead, and spirits wandered the ruins, and She stayed wary. But the human kept the sun in his pocket, and the trail led onward.

*

Edér gripped the broken standard in his pocket, trying to make the pain enough to out-yell the howling in his head. Finally. Finally the truth. That Woden had marched for Readceras, had supported the Saint, and had died in his service.

And no one would tell Edér why.

He followed Vailond through the uneven adra pillars among their ancient ruins. It wasn’t like he had much else to do around here. He could dig a grave, but what would he put in it? A piece of metal that didn’t even remember his name? Or his own heart, someplace it wouldn’t hurt?

Kana’s singing mourned. There was no point telling him to stop. Kana made people feel better, just…not this person. Not this day.

Edér snapped back to the cloudy world when Tyrhos nudged his hand. Quietly and without fanfare the wolf bore up under his palm and kept pace with him.

“You don’t understand any of this, do you?” said Edér, half smiling. “Ancient history to a dog. Sometimes I think you’re better off that way.”

He didn’t have a direction now. This was the hope that had jogged him out of Gilded Vale, and it had gone as far as it was ever going to go. Vail had done her best, but this wasn’t her war and after that little blowup he wasn’t so sure this was her soldier. He rubbed Tyrhos’s rough gray fur and thought, well, he knew where his next step was going. Maybe that’d be enough.


	68. The Cold and the Wet (Vailond, Aloth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond's party deals with a wet cave in Cliaban Rilag.

Itumaak turned up his nose first, sniffing. Sagani froze beside him. “People ahead,” she said. Tyrhos put up his ears as though offended that he hadn’t smelled it first.

“Actual Glanfathans, in actual Eir Glanfath, minding their business,” muttered Hiravias. “I’d be doing the same when my turn came up.”

“I’m not here to interfere,” said Vailond. “My dream…in my dream I did something, and it’s not going to involve despoiling or whatever. Let’s go around.”

There was a hill with adra and other stone sticking out in finger peaks. Vailond sent Tyrhos ahead to scout openings. Then she waited.

Tyrhos loped back and demanded petting from Edér. Vailond bit back some kind of one-liner. Edér looked tired, but he smiled a little bit as he rubbed Tyrhos’ back. They followed through a thicket and down a hill toward a black formation at the base of an adra pillar. Vailond lit a torch, and in single file they passed into a low-ceilinged cave in the black rock.

They heard only water, saw only glossy black stone, felt only still cold air. After an uncomfortable bent-over period they straightened into a slightly less squeezy pathway. Aloth raised a bronze light over his head. Vailond’s torch seemed weak by comparison but she kept it up. No use dumping all the work on the wizard.

There was noise ahead. Water. Vailond tensed. The others gathered at the slick lip of a little canyon perhaps two paces wide where flowed a rapid black current.

Tyrhos growled, then took a running start and leaped to the far side. He turned and whined as though to order her over.

Aloth waved one hand and stepped out over the water. Vailond’s cry died in her throat. He took another step on air.

“Move!” barked Hiravias. Aloth’s eyes widened. Whatever he was standing on, vanished. Vailond grabbed an outcropping and swung out to seize his forearm and haul him back toward the waiting hands of her friends.

The rock in Vailond’s grip cracked and crumbled. In the moment before she fell Aloth’s hand grabbed hers in an agony of force, and they fell together.

Cold. Rocks. Her legs, her ribs, the back of her head, slamming. Falling, icy, water tumbling with her, sliding into a place too narrow to move her arms, frigid, pouring around her, so fast, so cold, crushing her chest. Her lungs tried to imagine she was not underwater but their in and out burned and hacked. A fortune teller had stopped her in the street once. Beware travel by water. Crush, pain through the numb. Your soul will fly too early and you will have to catch it.

The passing stone battered her fingers but she flexed and gripped here and there, pushing, testing, until she found something that let her push above water. She pulled herself out, aching and shivering. Seconds later a dark struggling mass swept by and she seized the back of his clothes and hauled him onto the dark surface beside her.

They fell apart from one another. Vailond slapped his back once then curled up, coughing, fighting her ribs, her pain, her black wet breath. The pain in her head, neck, shoulders, stomach, legs was indescribable.

She sat up.

“Aloth?”

He was still curled up, shaking. “I—I'm all right.” Another cough.

“Idiot,” she said. “You could have died.”

“To repay you.”

“No! What were you going to do? I'm the athlete.”

“And I am the wizard.” He wiped his mouth with his sopping sleeve. “Do you imagine I would just let you fall?”

She didn’t say anything to that. What if he didn’t want to hear her “no”?

He struggled to his knees and kindled deep bronze light. He pushed it up into a spiraling tangle of tunnel fragments above them. “There. They may see that.”

He was wet like a drowned mouse. The little platform they were on, splashed on three sides by the deadly water, gave no dryness and no warmth.

“Vailond?”

“Yes?”

“If you remove your boots I may be able to dry them a little. Warm them, at least.”

“Really?”

“The spell wasn’t exactly formulated for that, but I believe if I…yes. Your boots, please.”

Curious, she complied. He made a sign with his hands and muttered something. “Take them,” he said.

Vailond did. They were dry and snuggly warm.

Without further coordination she peeled off her cloak, tunic, and breeches. The air was horrifically cold on her soaked underthings. “Do these.” Silently, and without looking at her, he did. She wriggled into her breeches. “Aren't you doing yours?”

*

In the dull bronze light Aloth forced his aching muscles to reach toward Vailond. His robes didn't hang right on his arm. Frigid, biting, the wound started on the back of his wrist and ran in jagged paths to his biceps. He wasn't sure he could get the shreds of his robe off without tearing something open or blacking out from the pain.

She set her mouth. “Close your eyes.”

He didn't question. He closed his eyes. There was a rustling and a sliding. “Open.”

She was back in her shirt. She was holding out her undershirt. It was lacy but for a coarse panel that must lie under her tunic strings. That was classic Vailond. It wouldn't do to be seen in lace.

“Do this,” she repeated sharply. He did it. She knelt before him and took his elbow. He clenched his teeth. Quickly, deftly, she wrapped the warm soft lace around the worst of his wound. Enough to slide the robe by. She turned her back. “Good enough?”

His wrapped arm felt thick and pained as he worked out of his robe. He focused for the spell. In a moment the robe was dry and warmed. It smelled somewhat like him.

The chemise on his arm smelled like her, under all the blood.

He struggled back into his robe and let out a breath. “You can turn around.”

She did. He saw where her tunic laces no longer stretched over linen, but over a dimly bronzed pair of curves. This was not the problem at hand.

He remembered to renew the bronze lamp.

They sat in the circle of light, in the malevolent splashing sounds of the subterranean stream, in torn fabric soaking warmth into clammy skin…not fighting.

When Aloth was in school he had known a woman. Daelysha was feisty, sophisticated, mischievous, sparkling…and when she snuck into the boys' dormitory she went for him. He had fallen, hard. Her laughter, her animated listening mien, her husky voice and all the things she could do with her tongue. One day she said her father was taking her away. He was too startled to fight. She laughed it off. She never came back.

Why did such a gem choose him? To this day, he wondered what the joke was.

He wondered if he should propose huddling for warmth. Vail would never have it. He could think of nothing to make this the mature, healed, right thing he wanted it to be. Her fingertips were playing among the laces over the inner curves. He had to say something.

“Aloth?” she said quietly. “I—”

“Hey!” It was Hiravias, somewhere above. “Is that a near-death experience or are you just happy to see me?”

The echoes spread, bunched, conferred, scattered, redistributed. Vailond looked up, businesslike. “We're alive,” she called into the grand noise chamber. “Durance would help.”

“You're lucky you brought the flashy lights guy,” added Hiravias. “This would’ve been a problem without him.”

“I know,” she said, but not for them.

Then there was rope and hauling and lowering and healing and climbing almost past his endurance. The entire party was in that twisty passage. Some Glanfathans had pursued them, but no one else had passed the violent stream.

Aloth joined her at her side once more. He wasn’t finished with that conversation. “What were you going to say?”

The straight face was as eloquent as a glow of guilt. She was controlling herself.

“I wanted to know if your arm was very pained,” she said. “Though perhaps it wouldn't matter, given all I can't do.”

“You did help.”

Her eyes widened. She didn’t smile, much, but her cheeks looked darker in the dim light.


	69. Clîaban: The Machine and the Gods (Vailond, Durance)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond finds another Engwithan machine, and gets cryptic words from a strange woman. Durance reacts to what Vailond has discovered.

An Engwithan machine, here in the close staleness of a higher cavern. Vailond knew the curves of gray and purple, the stilled mechanisms. She dropped all other thoughts and sprinted to find its control panel. She read the runes, hoping. Stupid, all this time, but hoping.

Trapping souls and directing them. Nothing else. Her heart hammered but her stomach just twisted. There had to be more. Some ritual the Leaden Key had done in the past, some other bîaŵac, some other answer. Something to unmake a Watcher. She stared at the machine and opened herself.

In this soul vision it was spinning like a whirlpool. Trapping, directing. A ritual of sacrifice, tearing people soul from body to feed the machine.

They hadn’t just done it here. They’d done it all over the Dyrwood.

The Leaden Key was stealing children’s souls.

The machine faded. The room faded. She saw before her a woman, blinding in spirit. She was familiar. Vailond could almost remember her name.

“I know this is hard to accept,” the woman said in a gentle tone. “But believe me, the future we can face with it is better than that distant past when we were blind.”

“Is this about me being a Watcher?” Vailond said thickly. “Because it’s not better. You crazy woman. It’s not better.”

The vision faded without answering.

Edér’s hands were on Vailond’s arms when she pitched forward. “Whoa,” he said. “Whoa. No need to shout, we can all hear you.” He looked grim. “We can all hear you.”

She brought her hands up to steady on his forearms. “I know where the Hollowborn come from.”

His eyes widened. “Eothas defend. Maybe it’s just as well I didn’t go for the cold water.”

*

Durance made a second fire this night. He kept his staff and its glowing red sigils, the ones only the chosen could see. He gripped it across his knees and leaned toward the flames. What exactly did he hope to find there? An end to this mockery. But the gods weren’t finished jesting.

Vailond came to the fire opposite him. Her wolf had evidently gotten distracted elsewhere. She knelt, seeming to study his face. Slowly he had unraveled her until he understood the primitive links of her heart. Someday with more unraveling he would understand why she consented to be tested by him.

“What is it?” she said.

“If you need to ask that, you weren’t paying attention,” he said stiffly.

“Pretend I’m a failure at all your games. Explain to me. What is it?”

“Games and jests. The Leaden Key pays homage to Woedica.”

“That’s so.”

“And Woedica stood with Magran against Eothas.”

“If you say so.”

He glared at her under his brows. “I do.”

“So why does it bother you?”

“Are you blind or just lazy? If Woedica’s sucklings were seeking to destroy a nation’s souls…did Eothas march to fight that? Were the Purges all pointless, tagging on the tails of more worthy conflicts? Everything I have done, to punish Eothas and his followers…did I have it backwards?”

“Oh,” she said. “So we might’ve won the war the loser put on to protect us.”

“And the Dyrwood has bled ever since. Strange, to desire a conquest…but it can be a deliverance, too.”

“We can fix it now. I just need to find these things.”

“Even if they cannot restore your failed nature?”

“It didn’t fail. I’ll get it back.”

“With stronger defenses, I should hope. Do you know how to raise those, if severed from your powers?”

She shook her head. “Did you hate Eothas before the war?”

So, no. She didn’t know. “Hate? No. He was useless. A god who absolves consequences, who hands transformation without knowledge…what lesson can you learn, when you know you will be forgiven? The hardest thing Eothas ever did was begin a war, and his followers were so stubborn it took years of Purges to remind them that a glorious figurehead is not a shelter. No, Magran denied her charms to him, and their falling-out consumed a nation.”

“Do you think she’s still working with Woedica?”

“Was I meant to know? Enough. I grow tired of the sound of voices.” He shut her out. One thing he could say for her, she understood quickly enough when to shut up. They each of them did their best thinking alone.

Oh, what if he had been wrong with every strike against an Eothasian? What if there was no one left to forgive him?


	70. A Disappointment And Some Nice Animals (Eder)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edér and Sagani unpack his failed quest at Cliaban Rilag.

“I was going to borrow him, but you look so comfortable.”

Edér shook himself out of his sulk. It was a sulk, ass on the ground, eyes fixed on heaven. He had Tyrhos under one arm, Itumaak under the other hand. The wolf and fox were helping him take in the shreds of moon that came and went under the night clouds.

“Reckon I can share,” he said, mussing Itumaak’s ears one more time and letting the white fox trot toward Sagani.

The dwarf walked up alongside. “I had a bad hunt once,” she said. “Well, more than once, but this one time. Seals. They’re little tubes of blubber with whiskers on one end. And this one big mother decided one day that she was done with us clubbing the little ones for meat. She went after us. Too fat to shoot, too heavy to pin down. It was a mess. And she was there all hours, day and night, for weeks, with apparently nothing better to do than stop us killing these half dozen seals.”

“You wait her out?”

“No, we gave up. I don’t think she’d be bright enough to stop even if we did manage to kill her. Gods, that was embarrassing.”

“Got that in your ivory carvings?”

“Please. I had to bribe Kallu not to record it for posterity, but I do think I convinced him.”

Edér laughed quietly. “Funny, the things we end up insisting on.”

Sagani looked at him, her dark eyes seeming enormous in the night. “The rest of us didn’t really see what happened back there.”

Edér sobered. “Neither did I. Just, Vail shaking a lot. She described some things you would’ve needed to’ve been there to know, and then…stopped. Without explaining anything. I know my brother fought for Readceras, and I know he died for it here. Everything in between is still a muddle.”

“Is she all right?”

He hadn’t even wondered. That shook Edér as hard as everything else. “I…don’t know, I…she seemed fine. I was just, with so much on the line, I assumed she would be…she’s fine. This can’t faze her?”

“She took all that Watcher stuff directly to the face. She’s talking to _Durance_.”

He took an interest in his toes. “I know.”

“Nobody’s saying you have to talk to her tonight. You’ve had this for sixteen years, a little time is in order.”

Right, but it didn’t seem fair to Vail. “Could you talk to her?”

“Whatever she saw…I’ll give Durance first crack. It might get her back into survival of the fittest form. You, on the other hand, don’t have a Durance.”

“By the grace of the gods and all good things,” he drawled. “Listen, it’s a disappointment. I’ve had those. Remind me to tell you about Elafa sometime. But I’ve lived my life so far not knowin’. Maybe not knowin’ was always the natural order of things.”

Sagani sat beside him. “I’m sorry.”

Edér watched the moon dip into one cloud bank and shoulder through the next. “We’re finding you that Persoq,” he said.

“I know,” she said in her quietly matter-of-fact way. “Thank you.”

The moon was streaked, masked, brassy, shadow-wrapped. His past had set in stone, and he hadn’t gotten all the words in in time. After everything, after every mystery and delay and world-tromping quest, all he had was tonight.

“You know,” said Sagani, “Itumaak plays fetch.”

That woman really did know what to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I enjoy Edér & Sagani.


	71. Return to Defiance Bay (Grieving Mother)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Grieving Mother reflects on her impressions of Defiance Bay and Hadret House.

Passage, the passage of time not for seven people but for a seething mass of history, a million souls or more, bound to a mundane step. It was She who was watching, wondering, traveling past experience and toward a land most known from story and song, from rumor and oblique dream. She did not understand how to heal such a place. Her visions, her creations, overshadowed, perhaps forgotten.

The Watcher walked with Her. Pain walking, regret, memories She could remove…yet the Watcher did not speak with Her, and perhaps her memories were not so easily shifted. Past lives like streamers beside her, strangers like bedmates and clinging lovers, and She could gird the woman around but perhaps could not free her.

The road, too, whispered of desperation. People passed, people who looked at Her and saw only the old peasant woman, only the ragged shawl beneath which She wove Her glamor. They did not smile. They did not greet. Their lives were shattered, their children blank, and only the gray hope that was the exhausted rebuttal to despair drew them on. She waved Her wrist, if only to hear the chimes, to remember a time of control, of sorrow transmuted, of desperation soothed.

Among these refugees Her heart bled. Day turned to night, and the Watcher’s seven gathered around their fire and spoke like old friends. No children, no curse here. They still remembered how to laugh through the heartache.

Then for the first time She saw Defiance Bay. It roiled like She imagined the ocean, screamed in a thousand voices. Tall buildings, one alongside another, up and up all around. The elven man walked taller here, and the ragged man with the staff as well. The Watcher stayed unchanged; she held herself upright and walked as though following things no one could see.

But they went into a great house with brown shingles and many lamps, and She stopped dead at the threshold. People were inside that house. People who could see her for what she was, who could cut through her illusions like so many cobwebs. She hugged Herself and stayed outside until the Watcher came out to coax her.

“I do not trust them,” She said for explanation.

“It’s all right,” said the Watcher. “We’re here to help these people, and they’ll behave.”

She felt the eyes on Her as She followed the Watcher up the red stairs to a woman who burned in Her mind like a second sun. The woman stared at Her straight through Her glamor…then turned away, and addressed the Watcher.

She Herself did not understand all that transpired. The Watcher was to seek a sponsor for some proceeding. The Watcher’s frustration soaked through her and her trailing souls like rain through a silken shirt. After a time it must be unbearable to wear, but she never complained.

The city was a madhouse, shouting, desiring. She followed, hoping for a night’s peace. She could close herself to these voices when she chose. It was…a luxury, and one she would share if she could.


	72. Edér's Apology (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edér unpacks a little of the disaster at Cliaban Rilag. Vailond is enchanted.

The party drank, heavily. Vailond included. Afterward everyone scattered to upstairs rooms for the night. Vailond stayed close to Sagani’s hip, and talked loudly about animal entrails, until the door was shut and all the men were gone.

In the morning was business. The problem was getting a sponsor to get into the animancy hearings. The city needed to know what Thaos was up to, and how many lives he’d wrecked on the way.

The party scattered to Copperlane’s marketplace, looking for supplies. Vailond stayed between Aloth and Kana, asking both for explanations of paper goods and magic vessels.

The challenge was working with the merchant House Doemenel. Among the major players of the animancy hearings, the Crucible Knights were annoying, the Dozens disgusting; rich people would have to do. Vailond had known honest traders. Maybe this would turn out well.

One favor for another. The party scattered to little tasks for Doemenel. Vailond stayed at Durance’s side, questioning him about Ashfall and trials gone by.

Vailond was impatient to tell Duc Wolf-Grin the important things. While she fidgeted, Hiravias came to her side and talked about battle scars. Grieving Mother came to her other side and spoke softly of chimes no one else could hear.

This was right. Staying away from Edér since her failure at Clîaban Rilag, this was right.

He was in her room when she walked in with Grieving Mother.

“Would you excuse us?” he said politely. “Vail. Sorry to ambush you like this, but you of all people should know that play.”

Mother looked at Vailond. Vailond looked at the floor. “Go on,” she said hollowly. “Tell Sagani not to come up yet.”

The door swung shut after the dark-haired human.

“Thank you,” said Edér.

She snapped her head up. “Nothing’s changed, Edér. I haven’t seen anything new. There’s nothing else I can do. I have nothing for you. You can go back to Gilded Vale. You can just go back to your farm. No purges, no Raedric, and I’m sorry, no brother. I’m sorry.”

She swallowed hard.

“You done?” he said quietly.

She opened her mouth and knocked a tear loose. She shut her mouth again and nodded.

“Good. Sometimes you get so tied up taking care of everything, you lose track of what you’re carrying. Now listen. I know you did your best about my brother, and I’m grateful. Honest, I am. Wish I knew more. Maybe if I’d been there for him to tell me…but we’re past that. That was my choice, and I made it a long time ago.”

She bit her lip. She couldn’t decide whether this sounded like goodbye.

“I lashed out at you, and I shouldn’t have. You’ve been nothing but helpful since I met you. And I don’t mean useful…or I do, but it’s not just that. I mean helping us get through the day, after every setback, after every fight. You could stare a blank wall into submission and I think you have, more than once, trying to sort this Watcher thing out. What it is…what it does, to you. I want to help, if you’ll have me.”

She could never have gotten this far without him. He had to know that. He had to know that he had cut close to her heart, closer than anyone in a long time.

Obviously. He should know that.

She cleared her throat. “’m sorry.”

“Nothing you could do.” He frowned at her. “Are we square?”

Words weren’t happening. He was big, and blond, and kind, and not angry with her. She reached out with one hand. He took it, looking concerned, and she wrapped her other hand over the heat of his touch. “Square,” she muttered, daring to squeeze.

He squeezed back. “All right. Let’s go.”

“If I ever…see anything. In our travels.” She wanted to. By every god and a half, she wanted to.

He smiled, but his eyes were sad. “I’ll be here listening, Vail. I promise.”


	73. The Godlike

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond meets an unusual ally, who is very pretty.

The reasons that Vailond was positioning her friends to take out every guard in a Vailian Trading Company outpost were…complicated. The Vailian Verzano was out of favor with House Doemenel, and, well, these things happened.

A godlike like the fantasy of an artist’s pen seemed to represent the Vailian interests, including promising not to interfere with what Verzano had gotten himself into. She was tall, dark-skinned, with green-back feathers sweeping back where hair might ordinarily be. And she was armored like a warrior. Vailond was starting to feel very short and dumpy.

The woman looked at the scene. She smiled unpleasantly at Verzano. “You had this coming.”

“Hm.” Vailond raised her crossbow. Verzano lurched toward the door. He never made it.

And the godlike, true to her word, didn’t do a thing. Her second smile was no more pleasant than the first. “Distasteful work, but when a cheater makes a mess someone must clean it.”

“Hm.” Well, that made House Doemenel happy, and apparently Verzano’s own people, too. “Do you speak for the Republics?”

Her carved mouth curved. “At their pleasure, yes. If you are seeking alliances in Defiance Bay, it would be refreshing for me to join you.”

“Oh, this isn't a trap,” said Hiravias. “She looks like she'd as soon sell us to Vailia as help us.”

Pallegina looked all the way down her nose. “Tell me, if you are blind in both eyes, why do you only wear a patch on one?”

“Hm,” said Vailond. Vailians terrified her. All that social structure. Aedyr had ranks, but you treated people like dirt or not dirt. Simple.

“Thinking of getting an alliance?” said Sagani. “Could be useful holding Caed Nua.”

“I met a death godlike once,” said Edér. “Never seen the Vale get that closed up and locked that fast before. Still, you don’t look so bad.”

“Thank you,” Pallegina said flatly.

“There’s a lot,” said Vailond. “But yes. I want friends in the city. Come with us.”

“We do some do-gooding,” Edér said cheerfully. “And some more obscure stuff, too.”

“That’s it, then,” said Vailond. “We’re off to get an invitation to the animancy hearings.”


	74. The Favor of Doemenel (Vailond, Sagani, Pallegina)

Pallegina intimidated Vailond. Vailond couldn’t get around that. The woman was tall and gorgeous and totally sure of her place in the world. Vailond could barely get her tunic on in the morning.

But she needed allies. She couldn’t get to Thaos and the end of her Watcherdom by herself. And…she might have trouble with these night hours by herself.

She had her own room this time, the better to not wake people up tossing or screaming.

Aloth knocked. Faithful Aloth. She came to the door and blocked it as she opened.

“I really, really don’t want to practice right now,” she said quietly.

He looked her over. “Very well. Some time off is in order.”

She eyed him warily. “But?”

“But nothing. I just wanted to check on how you were.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?" He laughed nervously. "Nothing. Did I say wrong? You’ve been under a great deal of pressure, and when you go away, it’s a little longer each time….”

“It’s under control,” she exaggerated.

His pale eyes met hers like lightning meets a mountaintop. “Are we losing you?”

The impulse “no” didn’t feel right, not talking to him. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’m trying. Aloth, I promise I’m trying.”

“I know you are. Maerwald tried, too.”

“Maerwald didn’t have you.”

The smile was faint and quickly gone, but she treasured it. Aloth took her hand. “I can barely keep my own soul under control. I fear I will be of little help to you.”

She squeezed his fingers. “Be here. The friend I come back to. You’ve known me longer than anybody but Tyrhos, you…you help.”

“I try. And I will. I could read aloud to you.”

“No exercises?”

“No exercises. Kana gifted me a collection of Deadfire legends. I think he wants me to expand my horizons.”

There was one broad chair in the room. Aloth settled in it and she perched on one arm and craned over his arm to watch the text as he read. “Galawain bares three faces to the cults of the Archipelago….”

“Hrm.” It was Edér in the doorway. “Uh. This what you've been doing this whole time? The others said it was nothing seeing as you play it so cool, but I mean, I just assumed…”

“Assumed what?” squeaked Aloth, clapping the book shut.

Vailond looked up. “Jealous?” It should have been a tease. She instantly felt afraid that it was instead revealing.

“No,” said Edér, tone deaf. “Just curious. Anyway, there's a man to see the Lady of Caed Nua. A slaver.”

“Kill him.” Vailond waited for a response after horror and didn't get it. “Oh, honestly. Find his cargo then kill him.”

“It is never possible to forget who you are for long.” Aloth seemed surprised that he had spoken. “That can be a good thing.”

*

The revelation of Thaos and the discrediting of animancy would have to take place in Duc Aevar Wolf-Grin’s hearings about the future of animancy in the Dyrwood. Invitation-only hearings. Sagani understood that he couldn’t hear the entire nation’s opinions at once, but Vailond knew something relevant. Yet her testimony was nothing until she got into that invite.

Gedmar Doemenel spent about ten minutes describing how he wanted Vailond to gain his house’s favor for that invite.

“So,” said Vailond, “you want me to kill a Crucible Knight.”

Gedmar seemed disappointed by this summary. “In a word, yes.”

“Fine. See you later.”

Sagani managed not to laugh.

“This will not be simple!” blustered Gedmar. “You must frame the Dozens! He is in the protection of Crucible Keep! This is a complex situation!”

“Death’s simple.” Vailond looked at her companions. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

“Huh,” said Edér. “So when in this conversation did you lose your mind? Because I lost track for a second there.”

“I hunt things all the time,” said Vailond. “And I do it when people don’t want me to. It’ll be fine.”

“I wouldn’t get in her way,” said Sagani. A ranger would know when a new territory would be decent hunting.

“Is she usually this confident?” said Pallegina, seeming to address any one of Vailond’s companions.

“I’m just surprised she spoke before it was done,” drawled Edér. “We leave her to it.” He shot Vailond a pointed look. “Within reason.”

Pallegina took this in stride. “I would be a poor ally to allow you to face a Keep full of almost-Knights alone.”

Vailond planted her fists on her hips and glared. “Can you sneak?”

Pallegina’s eyes sparkled as she shifted further upright. “Can you play the diplomat?”

“Can you run?”

“Can you invoke authority?”

“Can you kill silently?”

“Can you walk out knowing what you did and betraying nothing of it on your face?”

They looked at one another.

“I’d use the window,” grumbled Vailond.

“And rouse the entire Knighthood to arms?”

Edér coughed quietly. “If somebody’d told me in advance I woulda sold tickets.”

Pallegina, queenlike, ignored him. “Let me be useful to you. If a stranger is to pass into Crucible Keep, let it be one who is conspicuous, and whose movements are wholly accounted for at all times. During that you may use the window to your heart’s content.”

Vailond chewed on that a moment.

“Don’t turn down a willing decoy,” advised Sagani. Besides, it seemed like this one would stand before Woedica herself and spit. That was a good one to have on one’s side.

Vailond’s nose twitched. “I…would like that.”

Pallegina smiled. “You’re a sensible woman.”

*

Vailond left her wide-brimmed hat with Sagani. In fact, she bathed and then left her armor with her peculiar assortment of allies. The result was a sleek-looking little package that dressed like a pauper and moved like a shadow stalker. Pallegina was waiting when this elf came down the Brackenbury stair.

“Ready?” said Vailond.

“Entirely,” said Pallegina. Assassination was something her Republics had never asked of her, but she had to admit she was intrigued to see how the machinations of the city could be disturbed by just a finger in the right place.

A knife. Not a finger. Fingers in _other_ places sometimes did the trick, but that didn’t seem like Vailond’s preference.

They stopped together at the end of the bridge to First Fires. Vailond drew close, too close for comfort, but then, neither did she stare at Pallegina’s feathers or otherwise act unsettled by her existence. “When the clock strikes three I will be finished.”

“Then I will tour with them until the clock strikes three. You are confident your man will be in the chapel?”

“I have to be. Three’s a great time for worship, anyway.”

Pallegina stared. “And if he is not there you will just cut your way to where he is.”

Vailond raised one finger. “Sneak, please. Sneak.”

“I pray for both our sakes that he is in that chapel. Enough, we should not be seen together again today.”

“Hm.” Whatever that meant. Vailond slipped into the crowd.

Pallegina had to admit, this was more fun than watching her countrymen embarrass themselves in matters of common drug smuggling. She touched the angled lip of her armor’s collar and walked with head held high toward the Crucible Knights’ keep.

People stared. Why wouldn’t they? Her green-black feathers swept from her head in the sign of an avian godlike, chosen of Hylea. Her armor was that of a servant of the Vailian Republics, a paladin to be exact. She drew attention by existing. Some days she wanted to disappear into that armor and forget she had flesh of her own. Some days, though, she could really use what she’d been given.

Guards stood in pairs flanking the walkway into Crucible Keep. Pallegina strolled in and walked straight for the Justiciar with the air of authority. Oh, all of them tried, but she saw the real article.

“Ado,” she said, laying her accent on thick. “You are the supervisor here?”

The man frankly gaped. “Madam,” he said. “I am Justiciar Aldmar.”

She didn’t say she was here on official behalf of the Republics. That kind of lie had a damnable way of spreading. “I come from the Vailian Republics. I am not in town long. I had hoped to spar with the famed Crucible Knights.”

Aldmar swelled. “I am sure we can give you an adequate challenge,” he said, plainly not saying “drubbing.”

“Agracima.” She smiled.

People in the entry hall were staring and whispering. Pallegina followed Aldmar into a hallway and intentionally went the other way. She reached a room with a simmering forge and a number of people who looked shocked to meet her. When Aldmar hurried over to gather her she smiled blandly and went with him. People followed.

The sparring room was large and well appointed. The Knights took their combat, at least, seriously. People were gathering here. She made a show of raising her mace and examining it, then checking the buckles on her armor, then sliding fingertips upon her feathers, noting every pair of eyes that followed her.

Well, she had distracted much of the Keep. Time to send runners to gather the rest.

Her first opponent was a giant hulk of a man who wielded an estoc to scale. This was simple: an incantation to make each ponderous blow less likely to hit, and then some precision work on his knees. The cleric was running out to him even as he crashed to the sanded floor.

More people, and more. The man wielding two short swords was, alas for him, not prepared for the full force of a body check from a woman larger than he was. The wrestler did disarm her, but she fought dirty when she had to, and he staggered to the cleric with hands pressed over his eyes.

She heard the clock outside. Three. She smiled and held a hand for quiet. “Please. I must review what I have learned. Gods’ blessings, aimicos.” She sailed out with perhaps a little extra swagger.

By arrangement, it was a back room of the Fox and Goose that they reconvened in. Vailond was looking pleased with herself. “Are you all right?” she said.

“I…am fine. What about your mission?”

“Oh,” she said dismissively, “done. Everybody will know that somebody who crossed House Doemenel is dead. No sign of who or how.”

“They will guess when we speak together.”

“Guess and do what? I’m a hero to this city. And your government will protect you.”

Aloth was sitting in the corner. He had been staring at the wall. Now he closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

“I got their promise to get into the animancy hearings. He wants to keep me on as an assassin but I told him the city smells too much.”

Pallegina raised her feather-studded eyebrows. “And what did he say to that?”

“He just looked at me. Well, come on. We’ve got our invite.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As an experiment I'm publishing a minor arc together instead of disparate chapters. This does mean that POV jumps twice, but it might be a better-sized package.


	75. Wolf and Webb (Vailond, Edér, Kana)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matters accelerate as Vailond and her allies gain entry to the Defiance Bay hearings on the future of animancy in the Dyrwood. They gain critical information from Lady Webb, before and after the event.

The Grieving Mother tensed again when Vailond reached the threshold of Hadret House. “Yes?” said Vailond. “What is it?”

“These people can see me,” said Mother in low tones.

“Right, but they’re on our side. Lady Webb’s pretty reasonable. Maybe she could give you some tips about being a cipher.”

“It was easier to believe myself a Watcher.”

“But more practical, if we’re adventuring, to be a cipher.”

Mother looked away, but didn’t object again.

“You just stroll in here?” said Pallegina, looking all around while they walked through the front hall.

“Lady Webb likes knowing the biggest troublemakers in town,” said Edér.

“And somehow that judgment swings our way,” said Durance.

Lady Webb greeted them all cordially. She never turned a hair at Pallegina. Instead she got down to business: the most likely place to get Defiance Bay to mobilize against Thaos.

“Thaos,” the grieving Mother echoed. Her voice was soft as ever, but for a rod of iron at the center. “You know this man.”

Lady Webb barely twitched. “I have studied his movements extensively.”

Mother shook her head. “You have seen his soul. Bitter, a challenge. Your truth runs deep. What do you know about him?”

“Your friend is perceptive.” Lady Webb made it short. She had known Thaos. He had used her to read souls for years, inducted her into his Order, made her feel special, made her serve the mission he would never name.

They parted ways, and for some reason, he left her alive.

“If I had known then the depth of his determination, perhaps we would have parted on far less friendly terms. But…he let me live. And now my time has come to undo him.”

Vailond nodded. “You want me to say anything when I meet him?”

“Ah.” Webb shook her head. “I think he already knows. Now, then. You have a hearing to get to.”

*

The day’s hearing was already open when Vailond swept in. Edér stayed behind her shoulder, just existing in a big armed guy in armor kind of way. She named her invite and the usher brought them to a balcony overlooking the great hall of the ducal palace. Below there were nobles, merchants, factions – everybody who belonged to a city under attack. They turned when she entered. Wolf-Grin wound down what he was saying, and invited her to introduce herself.

Vailond was nobody’s idea of a public speaker. She scratched herself when she was struggling for words, which was often. Her grammar suffered. Her voice got louder and softer seemingly without pattern.

She had conviction, at least.

Wolf-Grin recognized her services to the city, and the recommendation of House Doemenel. By their request he gave her the floor to talk about animancy. She rambled a little bit about Raedric and the flaws of his murderous approach. Then she got to it: Heritage Hill, where animancers had been dupes and some power had used an Engwithan machine to raise the dead. Brackenbury Sanitarium, where animancers had been dupes and some power had sabotaged the research in the most theatrical way possible. She left Thaos out of it. She laid out her case: animancers were idiots, but they probably weren’t responsible for the Hollowborn, and whatever _was_ responsible must be caught. And brought to her, she emphasized.

Stars. She still believed she could reverse the Watcher thing. Well…who was he to say she couldn’t? But his heart ached to think of her disappointment if it should turn out to be impossible even for her.

He had sidled into her field of view early. As she got more excited she looked to him more and more. When she paused and licked her lips he nodded, hoping she found reassurance in it. For a moment her lost eyes fixed on him, and her shoulders relaxed a little.

She wasn’t watching her companions, but Edér did. Aloth studied her with a troubled brow and shadowed eyes. Pallegina was listening intently, nodding at intervals. Durance’s mouth moved like he was conversing with her. Kana was looking out over the crowd, to unknown purpose. Sagani watched the door behind them, and her hand didn’t stray far from her bow. Tyrhos lay at Vail’s feet, eyes half lidded. And Vail talked until she ran out of words.

“I admit,” said Wolf-Grin, “I’m unsure what conclusion you intend to draw from this account. Animancers must be either collectively stupid, collectively victims, or both. You’re well known in this city for honorable dealings and a very practical mind. What is your recommendation for the pursuit of animancy in the Dyrwood?”

“Put enough people on it and you’ve got to get a smart one eventually.” She seemed startled that she had said it. Laughter burst and immediately silenced in the crowd. She hurried onward. “I would lock them all up…but if we silence them, the powers causing the Hollowborn win.”

“An intriguing middle ground. We shall have to find enough keepers for the animancers we have. I believe now I have heard from all interested parties. It’s time to make a decision.”

Vailond gasped in what sounded like pain. She raised her crossbow and sighted down into the crowd.

Edér put his hand on his axe's haft. “Vail, what are—” At least three companions were saying it. Vailond whimpered and didn’t fire. A robed animancer, one of the duc’s earlier witnesses, suddenly roared and gestured at the duc himself. There was a sick pop and the ruler fell, dripping blood from cuffs and hems.

“Thaos!” screamed Vailond, but she wasn’t the only one screaming. The competing factions of the city fell upon one another as if scheduled to trade blows and eager to keep things moving.

Edér considered the balcony. A decent defensive position, but the violence below might cast issues up at any moment. “We need to move,” he shouted. “This way.”

Vailond didn’t answer right away. Edér watched her surveying the battlefield that the vast main hall had become. Below them guard was fighting noble, militia was fighting scholar. In her balcony she had full freedom with her crossbow, but for once she didn't want to hurt anybody. “Stop!” she shouted pointlessly. “It was a trick!” The duc lay in a shallow red pool. “Stand down!”

“Discretion may be the better part of helpfulness,” Aloth said next to her ear. “Come away.” He brushed fingertips against the back of her hand. If she realized it, she didn’t show. Later, though, Edér would remember that concerned touch, and the way Vailond didn’t fight it.

“Stay together,” she ordered. “Mother, confuse anyone who charges. Edér, shield. We move fast to Hadret House.”

Pallegina separated a mace from her ceremonial armor. That might not be strictly ceremonial. They passed two fistfights in the hallway and left the ducal palace.

The city had spun to nightmare. Little knots of people ran back and forth, attacked other knots, left only the wounded and dying while the others hurried on to form new groups and set fires and drag furniture and wagons into barricades.

“If I told them,” yelled Vailond.

“No one will listen now,” yelled Aloth. “Was it Thaos? No one knows or understands that. We do know. We need to follow Thaos. And we can’t do that in the middle of a riot.”

“This way,” yelled Pallegina. “The Republics control this building, and it has a door to Brackenbury.”

Without further question, they ran.

*

The city sparked and bellowed like a mad smith in a shattered smithy. Kana stowed his arquebus and took out a pistol. He was not here to blow chunks out of things. He was here to discourage any crazed individual who might decide that Vailond’s party had thrown their lot in with animancy.

Kana had read about insurrections. There was a particularly fine poem that detailed the escape of Romuo through the destruction of the Sapphire City. In reality things were hotter, the sky more orange, the screams harder to ignore. This place had lost sanity and poetry together.

In the chaos, ghostly Itumaak, burly Tyrhos, and the fearsome feline staelgar that Hiravias unceremoniously morphed into served for intimidation, and the remaining bipeds fought when they had to. They stayed close, they took the most direct route, and they defended themselves against screaming knots and waves of city folk who an hour ago had merely been frustrated with animancy and the duc’s silence.

So Vailond and her friends had reached Hadret House.

The façade looked untouched: ivy and heavily divided diamonds of glass. A place of stability. Kana’s heart revived a little until Vailond pushed the door open. It came off under her hand and clattered to one side.

Within? The ciphers, the servants, the operatives lying in attitudes of struggle. A few armored bodies, too. The Dozens or some other faction had taken this opportunity to wipe the place. Had they realized they were serving the interests of some insane lich?

Kana wondered what the last stand of the house had been like. The men and women of Dunryd Row were not fools, and they had some of the best soul readers in the Dyrwood. Had they seen this hideous horizon? Had they faced it on their feet, or had they scrambled around their desks, their tables, their papers, out to the several places of their deaths, and then fallen before they could bring a weapon to bear?

One thing was for certain, they had not fled. Oh, they deserved better mourners than the mob outside the gate.

“It will be a day for funerals tomorrow,” Kana said softly.

“And a while after that,” said Edér, but even his good cheer seemed damped. “We’d better see the damage.”

Tyrhos led the way up the stairs, with Vailond and her crossbow just behind. Pallegina brought up the rear. The woman had accepted this swerve with professional calm. Her nerve was as admirable as her unusual beauty. Kana looked forward to conversation in better conditions than this.

The room of Lady Webb looked pristine at first. The desk with its piles of papers sat in order. No bodies, no weapons, no flames. The diamond windowpanes softened the orange of the filtered light.

Tyrhos was sniffing the floor. He followed something to a wall hanging. Vailond started feeling around it. Kana and a peaked-looking Aloth came to join her. They opened a door into a little bedchamber.

Lady Webb lay on the bed. Something had carved into her heart and left her chest a bloody wreck. Her face was stern, the translucency of her life giving way to a gray pallor in death. But she was very slightly smiling. On the floor beside her bed there was a half-empty bottle of brandy.

Tyrhos had started growling. Vailond, to Kana’s shock, dropped to her heels and wrapped an arm around her companion’s neck. “I know,” she whispered. “She can help us. Stand watch.” Tyrhos whined but sat still, nose to the air.

Vailond didn’t leave his side. Kana saw nothing but the old woman’s blood. Here as at Clîaban Rilag, she seemed to go away, more than usual, mouthing things no one could understand. It seemed like a year before she rocked back. “You know this is how it has to be,” she gasped. She looked up. “Twin Elms. We need to go to Twin Elms.”


	76. Disposition of forces; deposition forced (Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A distress call, and Aloth’s big chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a conversation in here ripped directly from the game (italics). You may already know it. Everything before and after is new.

Vailond reeled.

Thaos had come back for his Webb, his cipher, his escapee. She had read something from him, cradled it in her mind so that Vailond would be able to find it from only Webb’s lingering soul.

Twin Elms. Thaos didn’t say what was there. “You know this is how it has to be,” he had said, and murdered her.

Webb had understood something in that moment, something central, something exciting enough to make death’s moment a peak of sensation. All Vailond had was the location. It would have to be enough.

Thaos had left Webb dead. Perhaps he had thought the cipher could not hang on this long. Or perhaps he was helpless to stop her. Regardless, Vailond knew where to go.

She took the brandy by Webb’s bed. It would do nicely tonight.

“Out of here,” she said. “East.”

“The Crucible Knights were barricading those roads,” said Pallegina. “And the sea will be no help. We must go north, or west.”

Something tickled Vailond’s mind. A soul link she had been ignoring because it hadn’t caused her problems.

She set the brandy on the corner of Webb’s desk in the outer room. She touched her forehead. “This is a bad time,” she thought.

The Steward of Caed Nua, that kind soul, sounded terrified. “You remember Lord Gathbin? Who laid an ancestral claim on Caed Nua?”

“Yes, the duc’s men told me I won that legally.”

“He’s here. He’s brought a battering ram to Caed Nua.”

It was a shame, but Caed Nua was not her problem. One friend, more of an acquaintance, would just have to fend for herself.

“Vail. Vail.” Vailond withdrew from her conversation. It was Edér. His hands were cradling her neck and the back of her head, his palms warm over her ears. He spoke softly, anxiously. “We need you here.”

For a second he was holding her, and his eyes met hers, and nothing else mattered.

Then she had to say the bad thing. “Caed Nua’s under attack.”

His mouth fell open. “Home away from home. Guess I thought we would have that, in the end.” His thumb brushed the top of her ear. She melted without moving a muscle. “We’ve hired people,” he said, but it was bravado. Beneath that he was really disappointed.

“I can stop him,” she blurted. “If we hurry.”

“It’d be a day out of our way coming and going. Are seven people and two hounds going to be enough?”

“It only takes one to kill him.”

“This again?”

“I’ll do it.” Vailond turned to the Grieving Mother. “Mother...can you go get information?”

Edér reared his head. “You're just going to send a grandmother into Thaos's battle?”

“Of course not. I'm sending Pallegina to protect her. All you need to do is get information about Thaos. He’s a foreigner to Twin Elms, someone must have noticed him coming in.”

“I understand, and I will seek,” said Mother. She looked to Pallegina. “Come. We must share the road.”

“Mind your step,” said Pallegina. Again, there was some kind of role or rank thing going on. “It is not a short road.” She turned back to Vailond, looking troubled. “There is a question.”

“Hm?” Vailond hoped it wasn’t about the old woman. 

“You have acted with honor, and reliably. I would not take the step I mean to take with your help and without your knowledge. The Brotherhood of Five Suns has sent me to negotiate a trade deal with the Glanfathans. Exclusive rights over some matters that Dyrwood might otherwise benefit from. I believe that leaving the Dyrwood weak now will only lead to war later…but my orders are clear.”

“You have to back the side most likely to survive,” said Vailond. “I’m sure your brothers have reasons, and you can renegotiate if the Dyrwood gets back on its feet.”

“Spoken like a foreigner.”

“You wanted me to know. You’re tough and you’re good at what you do. Do what’s needed. I won’t get in your way.”

She seemed amused by the return of her original assurance. “I see. Thank you.”

“Be right back,” said Vailond, and headed for a little copse off the road.

Everyone stood there. There was no safe direction to go in just at that moment.

“How long has she commanded battles?” said Pallegina.

“Since before I met her,” said Edér.

“About thirty seconds,” growled Durance.

“It's a matter of perspective. Still. She's learning.”

Pallegina nodded. “You trust her.”

“With my life and dinner plans.”

“Her trials have not ended,” said Durance. “How can I judge?”

Edér eyed him. “These the kind of trials that just keep on going until you die?”

“I don't know yet.”

Pallegina looked at both of them. “I am starting to see why she does not get affectionate.”

“She does,” said Edér. “In her way.”

“Well. I believe I have a direction. Until we meet again.”

“One long path away,” said Durance. “So be it.”

*

The road was studded with torches and lamps, signs of the stream of people trying to get anywhere but here. Vailond walked under the light of Aloth’s bronze sphere where it floated over her head. It gave her friends a very clear direction in the crowd.

Aloth came up beside her. His hands were moving at his sides, and he licked his lips more than once. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Now?” said Vailond.

“It can’t wait.”

She stopped, facing him. She jerked her head toward the side of the road, where the stream of panicked people didn’t come. Her other friends followed.

He cast them a miserable look and returned his focus to Vailond. _“I have not been entirely honest about my motives for traveling with you up to this point.”_

_Her heart added a beat. “What?”_

_“When I finished my training in Aedyr, I was introduced to an organization. All I knew was that they were opposed to the unchecked spread of animancy and that they could guarantee me postings far away from the Cythwood, my father, and his lord. At that time, it was enough._

_“The Leaden Key made prudent teachers. Their rules were strict, but their guidance was clear. I sincerely believed they wanted to keep kith from the folly of their own ambitions._

_“I came to the Dyrwood a little over a year ago. My orders were to gather information on animancy in the region._

_“A senior contact met with me every few months to receive my reports and issue new leads. She sent me to Gilded Vale to keep an eye on events surrounding the local lord, but I lost track of her shortly after that._

_“I don’t know if she was reassigned, killed or…sacrificed, the way you saw. By the time you met me, I’d been on my own for a couple of months.”_

Vailond opened her mouth. Her tongue stuck. She tried again. “You knew I was coming.”

_Aloth put up his hands. “I couldn’t have! I’d been out of contact with my superiors for months! I needed some kind of direction. After that scrape with the locals, I was ready to get out of town. But then you mentioned the ruins, but you refused to tell me what you’d seen. I was sure then that it had something to do with the Leaden Key. And I was correct, in a way. But what we found wasn’t what I’d expected.” He took a deep breath. Her chest was too crushed to match. “I knew the Leaden Key was trying to stop animancy, but I didn’t realize how far they’d gone. Murder, sabotage, abandoning entire districts to shambling horrors…and now the whole city is up in flames. I’m still not sure about animancy, but I know I’ve been following the wrong master. Please, accept my apology…and my service. Let me fight with you to stop Thaos.”_

Her heart was stuttering now, struggling to keep going. “Tyrhos,” said Vailond. “Go yonder. Stay.” Tyrhos whined and touched his nose to her hand, but he did as he was bid. “I can’t have him in the room when I’m angry at someone.”

“I know,” said Aloth. But he didn’t spare the wolf a glance.

Aloth wasn’t tall and Vailond wasn’t calm. The lightning shot between them, and if anger alone could make that literal it would have. “You were going to turn me in as soon as you found one of your people. That’s why you were so mad Iselmyr grabbed attention from those guys in Woedica’s basement.”

“I hadn’t decided to—”

“It was all a lie.” Vailond’s fists were balled up and she saw no reason to change that. “I protected you, Aloth! In the sanitarium, sabotaging that poor animancer’s notes to keep your privacy? I did that for you. I haven’t said a word about what I saw. I’ve covered for Iselmyr a hundred times. I did everything you asked me to. I liked you!”

“I know,” he whined. “That’s why I’m here instead of back there.”

“You’re here because you think I’m less dangerous. Boy, you are _dead_ wrong.”

“Vailond.” Edér sounded thoughtful. _“I still feel kinda attached, even with the betrayal. He’s got this way of taking offense that I really like. Tough one.”_

“I can fix that,” said Vailond. She looked at the orange sky, the beaten ground, the burning city on the horizon. “Easy for you to forgive, Mr. God of Redemption. The Leaden Key destroyed my life. They made me this… _thing_. And they still haven’t been punished for it.”

The others exchanged glances. Edér spoke slowly. “You talk like you hate what you’ve become.”

“Yes. Yes I do.” She rounded on Aloth again. “You know what I thought when I met you, all tailored tunic and flossy gloves? I thought, this man is nothing like me. No matter how much dirt you rub on him, he'll always be the lord master and I’ll always be the subject. Well, I was right. I was completely right. You son of a bitch, all you’ve ever done is betray me and I've got no one to blame but myself.”

“You can blame me,” he said through bloodless lips. “Is this it, then?”

Tyrhos was back. He whined and padded over to Aloth. Aloth stood stock still, eyes wide, fingers spread toward his scrolls. Oh, as soon as her heart would let her move he would find he wasn’t fast enough.

“Tyrhos, he isn’t worth it,” said Vailond. “He lied to us. All this time. He pretended to like us so he could turn us in to win back favor with his real masters. It doesn't matter that he's admitting it now. He lied to me, Tyrhos.”

Tyrhos's ears stuck straight up. He nuzzled Aloth's elbow, then opened his vast wolf jaws and locked his pointy wolf teeth around Aloth's hand.

The elf's life blood was pounding in his neck. Tyrhos pulled very slowly at his hand. He followed, mumbling desperate soothing things.

“Tyrhos,” warned Vailond. “That’s enough.”

He brought Aloth's hand to her blocking palm, opened his jaws, and padded around to shove Vailond toward Aloth, just enough to meet hands.

Her eyes were starting to water. “Don't touch me.”

They were standing, joined. She tried to think. That was how he solved things. Thinking. They were standing.

He pulled away. “I am sorry,” he said thickly.

D-don't—” Tyrhos liked him—“was any of it true?”

He blinked hard. “My name is Aloth Corfiser,” he said hoarsely, “and I am at your service.”

“For what that’s worth.” Tyrhos was staring at her. Was he failing to understand? Or merely choosing not to? She had to pick an answer. The thought of losing her tutor and companion tore at her. “If we were ever friends,” she told Aloth, “come with me.”

The elf looked no less strained. “I promise I will—”

He was staying. Clarity poured in. “I don’t care,” she snapped. “Change sides once more and I will punch up your nose so hard I can rip out your eyeballs from the inside.”

“Hwell, I conne ye were nye so civilized as ye let on,” Aloth said brightly. “He'd as soon top ye as teach ye, but he's too afeared of hisself to think it.” His entire face creased. “Ugh. Did she just make it worse?”

Vailond had to throw out Iselmyr's hint. She couldn't deal with it. “Could she?”

He cringed. “I just…I don’t know why you’ve let me come so far.”

Because when he pulled back from her hand she almost begged him to stay. Vailond bared her teeth. “I’m nice. Let’s get out of here.”

Tyrhos was close. Aloth reached into the warm ruff of fur over his shoulder and pressed for a moment. The wolf shook himself and walked at his side, calmer than anything. Aloth didn’t let go, and step by step they left Defiance Bay behind to tread toward Caed Nua.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “My name is Aloth Corfiser,” he said hoarsely, “and I am at your service.” - Callback to Chapter 1 there.


	77. Vagrants and Homes (Vailond, Edér)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond talks with Sagani about life and things. The party defends Caed Nua from Lord Gathbin's reach.

They made good time getting out of the city: Vailond, Edér, Aloth, Kana, Durance, Sagani, Hiravias, Grieving Mother, Pallegina. They overtook others on the road, citizens fleeing the burning of the city.

There was a hamlet on the road fully in flames. “No,” said Vailond. “We need to shelter until this dies down. That means Caed Nua.”

“Thaos?” said Aloth.

“He’ll be waiting at Twin Elms. I’m sure of it.” He was only one man. He couldn’t destroy the world unless Twin Elms hosted a much, much larger machine…no, she didn’t want to think about it. Shelter came first. Every hunter knew that.

They turned their steps north. In time they withdrew deep into the countryside, where a ridge could hide their campfire from unwanted eyes.

Vailond left the circle of firelight while Edér was doing the necessaries. She slipped into a little copse of trees and came out on a smaller ridge overlooking the rough terrain of this place that already seemed familiar to her.

Did other memories tell her where everything lay?

“Vailond.”

Vailond sat with her knees drawn up to her chin, her back resting against a cold sharp rock. Before her a rough land, above her only stars. She might as well have been on a poaching run, slipping through someone else’s lands like water, taking what she needed and leaving no trace.

A lone life, and a happy one. Deer don’t have souls to look at.

“Sagani,” she returned. When Vailond had escaped camp that evening she had done her best to leave no trail. Aloth, Kana, and Durance would surely be lost. Edér _must_ be lost, she couldn’t think when he was around. Pallegina and Mother might have a shot. Sagani, though… Vailond wasn’t sure she could ever get her fellow huntress off her trail.

Inconvenient, yet backwardly nice.

“It’s been an eventful day,” said Sagani. The dwarven woman walked up to sit beside Vailond. Itumaak wasn’t there; knowing Sagani the fox was keeping Tyrhos company, back under the forest’s eaves.

Vailond struggled to shake off her mood. “How are you holding up?”

“Well, I’ll never understand human kingdoms, for one thing,” Sagani said wryly. “I thought we had the ear of a reasonable lord before Thaos killed him.”

“So we’re hunting again.”

“It’s kind of a habit at this point.” Sagani was always composed, good-natured apart from the rare, justified “moose-fucker!” Vailond didn’t know how she wasn’t screaming on the inside all the time. Far from home, banished until an impossible quest was fulfilled…and forced to follow a madwoman who turned everything she touched to ash. No, Vailond didn’t understand Sagani at all.

“Did you mean what you said?” said Sagani.

“I usually do. What about?”

“You said the Leaden Key destroyed your life.”

“They did.”

“Then you said they’d made you a _thing_.’”

“Hm. Yes.”

“You have not become a monster,” Sagani said firmly. “You’re one of the sanest people I’ve met in my travels.”

“Maybe I’m not a monster,” said Vailond. “I’ve been forced to judge so many things, though, that by the numbers…no. I just, the visions, the voices, every day, I can’t even hear my own soul. I feel like I’m becoming Hollowborn myself.”

“We’re getting closer to finding a cure for the Hollowborn.”

“Yes,” Vailond said distantly. “Yes, I should do that.” But she didn’t want to talk about the quest. Sagani did not leave. Vailond breathed. Sagani breathed. The night continued its slow turn.

“Between hunting trips,” said Sagani.

“Yes?”

“Was there someone waiting for you?”

“No.” Ancient history. “Sometimes a fur trader, but mostly, no.” Lovers crowded. They grabbed. They stole your entire season’s antlers. They were more trouble than they were worth.

“At the end of this road, when you get un-Awakened…you’ll have your pick, you know that.”

“I don’t want anyone but him.”

“Who, exactly?” Sagani sounded innocent.

And Vailond’s throat closed. “Nobody. He’ll be bored with me anyway.”

“He cares about you. More than anything else I’ve seen since we started traveling.”

“Please, don’t. He’s so much better than me. He’s going to find someone nice to rescue.”

“I think he appreciates that you don’t need rescuing. You came from the same place. Maybe you’re meant to have the same destination.”

“What? Edér isn’t from—” Vailond’s stomach clenched. “You weren’t talking about Edér.”

“Huh? I just assumed you and Aloth….”

“After what just happened? Not a chance!” Vailond realized she was rocking, and stopped. “I’m so tired.”

“Honestly, some fermented reindeer milk could help with that. I would know what to get you if we were back home.”

The dwarf’s kindness was warming. “I have squirrel for comfort food. Hard to hit with a crossbow, but they taste nice.”

“Squirrels. The truly universal rodents.”

“Yes.”

“I could get you some.”

Vailond smiled, stiff-faced but a little bit happy. “Maybe we’ll go on a hunt together. Disgust Aloth.”

“Admit it, Iselmyr would love it.”

“Durance probably catches them by hand anyway.”

“Or by teeth, somehow. Pallegina might actually throw up.”

“Kana would try anything once.”

“Mother?”

“No idea. Edér…” her stomach fluttered…“must have trapped them a million times.”

“He would get some for you.”

“I have my own crossbow,” Vailond said quietly.

“He’d do it anyway.”

“I wish, so much, that he’d met me before this. Before me going slowly insane.”

“You learn a lot about someone by what they do under pressure. He could know poacher-you for years and not understand what he’s learned from you in the last two months.”

In her mind, calendars were not grids or words; they were marks on sticks, rows of memories to count down the days. They blazed in her mind. “Does that mean you could love someone so fast?”

“Oh,” said Sagani. “I think you know the answer better than I do. My love was an arranged marriage.”

“No. Really? And you liked him?”

“I liked him a lot. All things considered, it could have turned out much worse.”

How nice for her. Vailond’s history had more hard knocks. “Falling in love is too expensive.”

“But you’re thinking about it. A ‘thing’ wouldn’t.”

They walked back together, talking about constellations and dramatic hunts. Tyrhos and Itumaak followed quietly. Before the edge of the copse they heard it: Edér’s voice, hoarse, shouting Vailond’s name. Vailond wished that meant more than it did.

*

The camp carpeted the land that Vailond’s workers had so painstakingly cleared. You cleared the land around a fort so you could get a clear shot and your enemies couldn’t sneak close to send in sappers. Edér’s neck prickled. This wasn’t Vailond’s world. She would need help.

“So it’s assassination,” said Vailond. “Too bad we couldn’t get Doemenel to pitch in.”

“They seemed busy,” Edér said mildly.

“I can get in there.”

“What?” Edér wasn’t the only person saying it.

“Tell me which tent is his. I can get there. Tyrhos will have to stay.”

“Bad plan. Shame Pallegina’s gone,” said Edér. “I’d back her against an army’s attention span.”

“No need. I know the land here, sort of. I can do this.”

Aloth looked pained. “Don’t ask us to let you do this alone.”

“Can you turn me invisible?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Do that.”

“It’s a subtle spell, you will need to be careful not to break it.”

“Fine.”

It was an assassination job. Vailond had no intention of meeting Lord Gabran on the field of battle, nor of allowing him to mount a siege. If he was gone, there was nobody to claim Caed Nua but her. Simple.

It was an hour before sunrise. She hadn’t tried to be stealthy for months, since she had come upon her strange companions. As she crept through the camp, she kept looking behind her, waiting for banter. But none followed. She kept close to the ground, and she kept her long dagger in her hand.

Gathbin had opted for a big colorful command tent with a high green tent alongside, probably for sleeping. Vailond made it to the entrance of the green tent and peered in. There he was, the ugly man who held a claim to Caed Nua.

What had he done for the place? She had made it habitable. She had filled it with people. And she would defend it by any means necessary.

Killing was not a big deal. By the time he was awake his throat was pierced. Not so much as a scream. The gentle draping of Aloth’s spell seemed to hold as she snuck through the rest of the army to the tarp-covered battering ram an arrow’s leap from the front gates. She didn’t do a lot of mechanical work, but she pulled out pins and axles wherever she could. She went to the gate. A determined person could still climb up one of the towers to the battlements, if they didn’t mind serious peril. Vailond made it to the battlement and thought at the Steward. “Well, Gathbin’s down.”

“What? How?”

“A bad case of getting knifed. Hey, can we wake all these guys up?”

“I can’t amplify my own voice like that,” she said regretfully. “Perhaps the troops inside the walls could go up and make some noise?”

And that was how Vailond came to be among a hundred men clanging weapons and shouting. The opposing army woke up in a weird, creepy ripple. Vailond checked her own hands for signs of invisibility. No, that was over.

She waved her hands and her people stopped making noise. There were people coming out of the command tent now. Oh, they saw.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she yelled, not knowing how else to open it. “Gathbin has set his bid and lost it. My quarrel with him is concluded. If you have a quarrel with me, step right up.”

The ripple became a rumble, which became a few men working on the battering ram, which came apart in their hands. Vailond didn’t relax until the hirelings and fools started draining from the profitless field.

Someone ran right up to her and she jumped. “Yes?” she gulped.

The messenger was a young man, lanky, human. “My lady, don’t you remember? You sent us to get rubbings of the Engwithan machine outside Gilded Vale.”

“I did. Yes. Do you have them?”

“Here, my lady.”

Eagerly Vailond ordered some guards away on the stone walk and spread out the rubbings. The carvings were…identical to the ones in Cliaban Rilag and Heritage Hill. Nothing about Watchers. No hope at all.

“Thank you.” She almost wished the soldiers would come back for a fight. She watched them go, until she remembered “Twin Elms.”

She went down to the great hall, where her friends were eating heartily. “Moonrise, east gate,” she said, and went to wait. They would leave that night, and someday soon, she would catch up with Thaos again.


	78. Mother's Dreams (Pallegina, Kana, Vailond)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond's friends go to Twin Elms. Some of them experience troubling dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw childbirth.

Pallegina didn’t think much about the peasant woman she was protecting. They made good time on the road, and the woman did not reach out for conversation. It gave Pallegina time to think, a rare luxury.

Serving the Brotherhood of the Five Suns, the authority in the Vailian Republics, was a great honor. Her assignment to the Dyrwood hadn’t been all that glamorous. Defiance Bay’s own House Doemenel goaded them at every opportunity, a matter that Verzano and his illicit trade had done nothing to improve.

The days were hot now, their sunrises reaching greedily along the arc of the horizon, their skies streaked with white clouds. The land came to low ridges and spread out, and their green expanses were studded with cloud shadows.

The old woman, wrapped in her tattered dress and mended shawl, did keep up. She looked at Pallegina. “You are beloved of Hylea.”

Ugh. The question of the feathers that replaced her hair. “Yes, so loved I will never be a mother under her wings.” That shut people up. And it did shut the woman up. Pallegina felt bad enough to make small talk for much of the afternoon, but the woman also seemed happy to walk in silence.

That night Pallegina’s sleep didn’t fit quite right. She turned and thrashed against unnameable shadows. She came out into something new and different.

She was lying down, her legs spread. Her body was aching and misshapen. She shuddered convulsively, over and over, and knew that she was covered not only in sweat but in blood.

There was a woman at her feet, reaching.

The woman said things, joyous things, in the passage of something into her arms. She wrapped cloths around it and showed Pallegina: a baby, dark with crying, slick and loud. The woman settled it in Pallegina’s arms and murmured happily.

Pallegina cried. This, after all this time. The thing a godlike could never have. Only this.

She woke with raw eyes and a sick feeling. That body hadn’t even felt like hers. Why would such a dream choose her, and why had it felt so real?

She said nothing through breakfast, and when she rushed and returned to the road the old woman kept up. The feeling of Pallegina’s own body, or rather her other body, taunted her. That was the moment, the most obvious moment of being a mother. The way she would never be. Because the godlike could never have children. She could draw her thoughts away from the fact but it was impossible to drag them away from the memory.

She stopped to collect herself.

“Pallegina?” The old woman’s voice quavered.

“It’s nothing,” Pallegina said briskly, smearing a tear away. “A bad dream.”

The woman was silent for the space of three steps. “It did not please you?”

“What are you talking about? Why should a dream please me? It was only a dream.”

They walked. Pallegina absently touched her stomach, then turned her focus to the world and the list of things she could build to convert wilderness to civilization.

At noon the sun came at an angle lower than she was accustomed to in the Republics. Still, noontime was a good time. She walked easily, with a swing in her step. She had dreamed of nothing last night and awakened refreshed, and that was all right.

*

Twin Elms was new to Pallegina. All of Eir Glanfath was. Twin Elms was a walled city, fenced by wooden palisades where flowers grew base to tip. The old woman detached herself at once. “I must investigate this place,” she said. “I will meet you at…” she looked around… “the Celestial Sapling.”

“Very well.” Pallegina asked around until she heard of an anamenfath in this outer district. One of a council of rulers; it would do.

She tracked the anamenfath to a longhouse at the center of the district. The woman sat among advisors, and looked up with rheumy eyes.

“I am here on behalf of the Vailian Republics,” said Pallegina, bowing.

“Yes, I imagine you are. We already had one more estramor than we needed. We will not open our gates again.”

“And your negotiations?”

“We will not negotiate with estramorwn. Please be on your way.”

“Who is this estramor? I may have business with him.”

“Have it outside Eir Glanfath,” the woman said stiffly. “Good day.”

*

Kana kept an eager eye on the road ahead. Twin Elms was said to be the greatest city of the Glanfathans, the citadel of those clans who kept the Engwithan ruins sacred and pristine.

He did not realize at first that the forested hill on the horizon was cut through with thin patches, ribbons of clear. He did not realize until they were close that the trees spilled out over a high palisade of ancient logs.

Vailond slowed, staring. “This is a city,” she breathed. “Defiance Bay is…is…is an assortment of bricks.” She raced forward.

The guards at the wooden gate were Glanfathan, armed and armored, and not amused by an elf bounding down the road like she meant to set it afire. They stepped in her way.

“I’m here for a friend,” she said, “I think your place is beautiful. Let me in.”

“Twin Elms is closed to estramorwn,” said one guard.

“But I’m not an estramoon. I’m just me. Did you meet my friends? An old woman and a feathered godlike.”

“We remember the chosen of Hylea. There was no old woman.”

Vailond seemed unfazed. “Where is she?”

“At the Celestial Sapling, formulating her next argument for why we should allow her one step further into this city.”

“But politely,” said Vailond.

Kana stayed close now. The paths of the visitors’ district were gracefully curved, each turn showing some new wonder of a tree or the sod-roofed entrance to a dwelling or tunnel. Though the area penned in the visitors it also contained many free Glanfathans, many of them with animal companions of their own. Vailond trod carefully here, but she smiled when Tyrhos picked out another animal and sought to sniff. Without violence they came to the inn. The Celestial Sapling proved to be in one of the biggest trees in the district…up in it. Kana clung to the lift’s rail and enjoyed the view over this bustling forest.

Pallegina was seated in a booth in plain view of both bar and door. That woman had a healthy wariness about her. Opposite her, shriveled in rags, sat the old woman Vailond liked so much. Kana hoped her journey had not been difficult.

Vailond greeted both of them. Pallegina and the old woman made room around the table. Edér helped himself to a chair from nearby and straddled it, resting his chin on his arms on its back.

Vailond started. “How are you?”

Pallegina snorted. “They will not speak with me. Despite the fact that they have entertained previous ambassadors.”

“Come with me. Maybe a Watcher is good for something.”

“It is your influence in Defiance Bay that may recommend you. To me among others.” Pallegina’s second eyelids slid closed and open. “Vailond…I am not here to benefit the Dyrwood.”

“Funny, neither am I.”

“Ac. Even if it means war in the future?”

“How is that yours to decide?”

“You would do as the princes bid.”

“Doesn’t that get you less punished?”

“Hm. I see your point.”

“Then your decision seems clear,” said Kana. “A country that did nothing that might precipitate war would find itself divided and conquered quickly indeed.”

Pallegina inclined her head. “Just so.”

Vailond looked ready to move on. “Any sign of Thaos?”

“Rumors,” said the Mother. “An outsider has come this way, scant days ago. I have seen his face from neighbors’ minds. He moved into the upper city, beyond where estramorwn are allowed. We could not follow.”

“Looks like we need access further into the city,” said Vailond. “I wonder if anybody else needs an assassination.”

“Or a good dog,” suggested Edér. “You know, petting loosens people up a little.”

They ate, they drank, they talked about Twin Elms. Kana talked about the druid retreats in Rauatai. It was considerably less forested there. He was happy for the recollection.

After supper they stood and headed for the hallway. Aloth scuttled over to walk beside Vailond. “Vailond, please. Can we speak somewhere? Alone?”

She didn’t look at him. “You want a smaller audience for your next lie?”

“Why did you accept me if you won’t trust me?”

She looked at him then. Her blue eyes poured out passions unbound, and unbound too late. Kana felt he had trespassed just looking at it. It was a long time before she said. “Then go, if you want to.”

“Thaos is still on the loose.”

“Yes,” she said hollowly. “I imagine so.”

*

She had a two-bed room with the Grieving Mother. Sagani seemed to have gone out for the night, and Vailond didn’t blame her; there was so much to see here.

She dreamed in a memory. Hands, weaving, chimes on wrists, it felt so, so familiar and she didn’t know why. Her hands wove. She drew the child forth. It did not cry. It did not notice her. It stared ahead, and it breathed a raspy breath.

But she tinkled the chimes, and she changed it. When she handed the babe to its exhausted and sweat-stained mother, the mother cooed and the baby—Vailond could not explain—the baby had no focus, no care, no crying, and at the same time the baby burbled and screamed as it reached for the mother’s face.

Vailond sat up, panting. Her forehead was cold with sweat. Tyrhos perked up between the beds. Vailond saw that he was all right and discarded everything but the question. “What was that dream?”

Slowly, the Grieving Mother sat up and drew her knees up before her. “Do not send me away again.”

“You forced false memories into mothers?”

“While my work stood, they had children. Living, grabbing children.”

“You can’t just do that to people!”

“I did it to Aelys. You asked me to.”

“That’s different, she went through something horrific.”

“As horrific as finding out your beloved child whom you have dreamed of all your life and nurtured for nine months is a soulless shell that will never know your name?”

The pain of the Dyrwood, the one she had selfishly hoped would never touch Aedyr. “But they must find out. You can’t follow them around fooling them forever.”

“No,” she said, almost singsong. “I was never that good.”

“Have you done it to me?” demanded Vailond.

“You see me, Watcher. What I bind in souls, you can unbind.”

Would you anyway, please? she didn’t say. It wasn’t forgetfulness she needed, it was blindness and deafness; a block of not the recall, but the experience itself. She hugged herself. “I have to think about this.”

The Mother looked at her with glistening gray eyes. “Do you believe that the truth that forces itself upon us in the world is more important than the truth we make for ourselves and each other?”

Vailond squeezed. “I don’t know. Sometimes you deserve the one that forces.”

They left it at that. It was enough to haunt what few moments she had to spare.


	79. Wisdom of the Ancients (Vailond, Edér)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond and her friends meet a pair of keepers of the Twin Elms, and are not thrilled by the news they carry.

Vailond walked the streets of Twin Elms. It was beautiful, but haunted. She saw visions out of the corner of her eye: the rack, the stake, the dying, the heretics. If she shook her head they flashed in her vision. A name invaded: Iovara, and it had the warmth of someone close. A mentor, a teacher. The stake, the dying. It wasn’t just insistent. It was familiar. Her soul was no stranger to these paths.

People who greeted them called them estramorwn, estra-more-oon. They did not say it nicely. Pallegina met them as they reached the longhouse where one of the Glanfathan anamenfath was holding court. And it really seemed that way: the circle of lower-ranking observers, the public judgment.

Anamenfath Bethwl had agreed with the others on allowing the robed outsider into their sacred city just days ago. And was determined not to allow another. Vailond brought every argument she had to bear. She made up some based on whispers around her, based on voices from people who weren’t there. The Grieving Mother took her hand. She squeezed, and argued until the anamenfath fell silent and stared.

“You are a Galws an Anams. A watcher of souls.”

“Does that get me into your city?”

Mother held her hand. She saw a cube of stone, a message upon it, and with the clarity of her Engwithan runes, she read off the promise from the Builders to the Keepers. Currents she didn’t care about, history that did not benefit her, but words, words opened all doors.

Even this one.

When she released the Grieving Mother’s hands she saw the red marks of her grip on Mother’s fingers. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“For what?” The Mother’s gray eyes were untroubled.

“Find the delemgan of Teir Evron in Elm’s Reach, Watcher,” said the anamenfath. “If the gods have sent you here with a purpose, the delemgan will know.”

Closer. She fed Tyrhos. She hunted.

*

The Golden Grove, the towering Twin Elms, the bridges like flat trunks grown in a natural arc over sparkling waters, the animals wandering among people without fear – Edér could tell that Vailond was walking in awe. It was nice to see her looking at the waking world…even if she obviously wasn’t doing it some of the time. Still, sometimes she caught his eye, and looked around at the forest, and smiled.

The Delemgan were a pair of tree ladies. They were very beautiful, in a flowery, strategically mossy kind of way. They demanded to know why Vail had come here and Vail told them.

“Thaos Ix Arkannon,” said the possibly more beautiful one. “We know of his coming.”

“You trespass only in his footsteps.” No, that one was more beautiful. “Are we to believe that is the limit of your plan?”

Vailond planted her signature stance. “Get in, make Thaos un-Awaken me, get out. Or I can kill him, if you want. I don’t really care as long as I’m not a Watcher.”

Aloth squirmed. Poor fella. He’d probably assumed that he was on the same track Vailond was. But no. He didn’t think Vailond would ever be on Aloth’s track again. She took his unmasking hard, even seeing his plans for endgame. She wasn’t here now to solve the Thaos problem in the same way he was. She wasn’t here to stand at his side like they’d done together since Gilded Vale. And, perhaps, that bothered him as much as the idea that Vail might spare Thaos after all.

The first beautiful one narrowed her luminous, many-ringed eyes. She really did seem ready to melt back into the bark of the grand double tree behind her. “I see it now. Your soul is Awake. Past overwhelms present. Your time has nearly reached its end.”

Vail held her head high. “That’s not true. Thaos can undo it.”

“Ah. I am sorry to tell you this, but Thaos cannot give you what you seek. Nor can any man.”

“Woman? Child? Animal? Gold? Power? Tears from a stone? Tell me. I’ll get it. I’ll bring it. I don’t care.”

“An Awakening cannot be undone.” That rough sweet voice played low. “No more than your past can be undone.”

“You don’t know that.”

The Delemgan exchanged looks. One started laughing like sunlight among willow wands. The other rippled it back. “Ah,” said the second, “perhaps there is something of souls we have not seen in our ages…but we know Watchers.”

“If we had better news,” said the first, “I would tell you.”

“But you are running short on time, and Thaos is near,” said the second. “Consider the best use of your remaining resources.”

Their eyes wandered. In reply, Vailond snarled. “These people are not resources. And I will not spend them.”

“Appreciated,” said Edér.

“Thoroughly,” said Kana.

“If you are to follow him, you must go to Sun in Shadow. There is an entrance on Burial Isle, but you will die if you leap unless you first have a god’s favor. For this? Enter Teir Evron at the rising of the sun. You will find your allies there.”

*

“A private room.” Vailond looked over her companions. “You’ll manage.” The man at the desk called over a brown elven barmaid, who smiled at everyone and led Vailond up the curving stairs and away.

By the time Edér came up, the only sign of Vailond’s passage was Tyrhos himself. In the broad hallway dotted with doors, the great gray wolf lay down in front of one in particular. When he noticed Edér he brought his bristly snout up and growled.

Well, that was new.

“Tyrhos,” he said, “I need to talk to…that is, I think she…look, your friend. She’s my friend, too. And I need to talk to her.”

Tyrhos rose to his paws and growled again. His hackles were up.

“Easy, easy, it’s just me. You know me, Tyrhos. We’re friends. And I’m Vail’s friend. And I need to—”

Tyrhos snapped at Edér’s hand.

Edér sat down on the floor opposite the door and glared at him.

Tyrhos glared back, with eyes blue like shadows on snow.

Edér at perfectly still for, by his count, twenty-three minutes. He stood again. Tyrhos raised his eyes.

“I’m going in there,” he said. “Your friend shouldn’t be alone.”

Tyrhos whined and padded over to push his nose under Edér’s hand.

“I’m scared, too,” said Edér. “Let’s go in.”

The door was unbarred. Maybe Vailond had figured Tyrhos was protector enough. The wolf stayed outside the door, facing the hall. Edér ventured in to do whatever it was Kana and Aloth did, just with less magic.

He heard a racking sob and a pained inhale. He scanned the room twice before he realized the bunched shape on the bed was Vailond, with her head under a pillow.

He came to her side. He crouched. “Do you want to talk?”

“I’m going to go crazy.” The sobs ripped through her like lightning through tree bark. “It doesn’t matter, none of it matters, I’m losing my mind, my dreams, the voices, the faces…I can’t stop it. I never will.”

“Look at me. Look at me. Vail, you’re not crazy. You’re beating this. Got that? You are winning.”

She shoved the pillow aside and stared at him. In the watery light from the window she looked like she’d smeared tar under her eyes. She swallowed. Her mouth seemed to relax. Her tears welled up once more and seemed to subside. Edér breathed easier. “There,” he murmured. “You’re all right.”

Her blue eyes glistened but her mouth was calm. “If something happens to me. Will you take the fight to Thaos? Will you finish what we started together? Help all the Hollowborn?”

“First of all, I don’t know what a man like me could do against an animancer as powerful as Thaos. Second…wait. What could happen to you that we can’t handle?”

Vailond stared at the floor. “Please, just say you will. Everyone will help you. Aloth can pay off his debt. The others, they’ll help, they know you, they like you. I’ll teach you how to deactivate an Engwithan machine.”

“Vail. What do you think is going to happen to you.”

She kept staring. “I will go crazy, or I’ll die. And I think the second one would be better than the first.” She looked up. “For both of us.”

“Tell me you’re not saying this.”

“For both of us. You’d be free.”

“No! No, no no, and no. Vail, we’re so close to answers.”

“You heard them. Being a Watcher can’t be undone. I will see souls until I’ve joined them.”

“Which is not today, or tomorrow, or for a very long time. You can’t give up. Thaos might still know something.”

“Why do you keep hoping?” she snapped.

“Don’t know. I reckon I never got out of the habit. Are you telling me you plan to stop?”

“There’s no point anymore.”

“We will find an answer!” He might note her pain more if he weren’t so busy mirroring it. “And, damn it, if you’re not here for it then all of this was for nothing.”

“Edér…” She seemed to grope for words. “I’m tired.”

He knew. “Then get some sleep. Simple steps.”

She hugged herself. “Please go away now.”

He didn’t. A little contact would do her some good. He leaned in and touched the top of her head, then kissed her forehead, a light dry kiss. He nuzzled the point and drew back. She was feverish and soft to the touch. “Promise you’ll be here in the morning.”

She was trembling. “Promise,” she said. Probably only because she liked him, but it was enough to leave her for the night.


	80. Night's Vigil, and Dawn After (Aloth, Hiravias)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond learns where she stands with Aloth, with Hiravias, and with Galawain.

As it happened, Aloth got the room next to the one that Tyrhos was guarding. After Edér left Tyrhos whuffed and watched him go by, but didn’t try to interfere.

He got his confirmation on the room when the scream came. It was hoarse and gigantic. She was dreaming again.

For obscure reasons he had stayed fully dressed. Now he stole out to the hallway and to Vailond’s door. “Vailond! Vailond.” The door was unbarred. Tyrhos let him through. He heard Vailond sob as he entered, and when he rushed to her bedside he saw that her eyes would squeezed shut. She had never told him whether that blocked the visions.

He didn’t touch her first. He never touched her first. He never had the right to touch her.

Only the whites of her eyes showed as she shook. Yet she reached out for his hand. He curled his fingers round her coarse knuckles, squeezed his smooth palm to her coarse skin. Temporarily drunk, he eased up to stroke the side of her face. “Vailond,” he said softly. “Can you hear me?”

She swallowed hard. “Don’t ever stop talking.”

His heart broke a little, but there was a selfish seed of happiness at core. She needed a lullaby, that was all. “I could tell you about the spring faun again.”

She made a throaty sound. “I don’t remember all the details.”

Maybe he shouldn’t, but he stroked her cheek again. “Long ago and far away, there lived a family of fauns: spring and summer, fall and winter. They passed the seasons among one another, and for a long time the world prospered.” As an experiment he began to weave Arkemyr’s Dazzling Lights again, floating over her face, shining over her closed eyes. She made a little sound and seemed to contract in a snug way. He wove and spoke. After he’d finished the introduction he paused, struggling to remember what he had made up for her the first time.

She opened her eyes. Her lashes were dark in the uncertain light. “I’m still mad at you,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said, heartsick. “I can go.”

“No.” She trapped his hand against her cheek and closed her eyes again. “You can’t.”

He maintained spell and story for as long as he could last. She breathed easy when he stopped, but he stayed anyway, guarding against the moment when she remembered to be hurt again.

*

Vailond woke with her arms around something just over her own size and warm. It pressed against her breasts and thighs, and she curled around it. It was warm.

Under her laced fingers, his heart was pounding.

For a long second she let it happen. Her nose was in Aloth’s hair and it was silky, scented by soap. Her arms were trapped and tucked respectively to keep him close, and her hands rested against that frightening, thudding proof that he was awake.

After all they’d been through, wouldn’t this be better than hating him forever?

No. No, not really. If she just satisfied him to keep him around for the big fight he would know, and it would hurt him. And…if she satisfied him for herself…there was no point. She was here to fight and die. Distractions could only worsen her chances.

She’d been awake for two minutes and already felt sick with too much thought.

She’d been awake for ten minutes and already felt sick with too much thought. His heart had slowed to a canter. She felt her body tightening in place, curling as though to reduce this mixed-up little scene into the crook of one protective arm. Then, with a shock like a sneeze, she made herself jerk away. “Ugh,” she said loudly.

“Ah,” said Aloth. It sounded alarmed. “Oh, Vail,” he whispered. She scrambled away. He slid off the edge of the bed and came up frantically smoothing his robes.

“I’m sorry,” he said hastily. “I meant to—I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s forgotten,” she said. “Please go.”

He looked like she’d just made a crushing argument. “Did you at least sleep well?”

She could give him that much. “Yes.”

“I’m glad. I…should go.”

“Yes. I’ll be along soon. Edér must already be downstairs, gods, he can’t know.”

If anything, Aloth looked even more wounded. “Of course. I’ll go wash up.”

She let him go. That was the right thing to do. Believing that that was right would spare her a lot of thinking.

*

Many of the druids of Twin Elms accepted Vailond and Sagani, and their two-legged friends. A few examined Tyrhos and Itumaak closely. And a very few noticed something about Hiravias.

He felt every last stare. He was marked by the soul devourer, his first natural wild form.

Vailond seemed to notice. “So the staelgar’s unusual, huh?”

“You got that, huh? Was it the six-inch claws or the being bipedal?”

“Yes, what is that?”

“The Autumn Staelgar. Among other things, it can walk on its hind legs.”

“I’ve met druids,” said Vailond. “But I never met a staelgar shifter.”

“It is my particular gift. Gained while in battle with the staelgar that cost me my ear. I transformed in that battle, into what you saw. My clan ostracized me for it.”

“What’s ostracizing?”

“Eh? It’s kicking out with a healthy side of ‘we’re too good for you.’”

“Oh. But you’re so useful.”

“Music to a lost wanderer’s ears. No, the gods saw fit to bless me with the form of a soul eater. Fit to terrorize any Glanfathan from here to the White that Wends.”

“Maybe it was Galawain’s idea of a gift.”

“What, almost dying and then becoming a rampaging horror? Sorry, I think Wael better represents the level of logic that went into that.”

A hunter must-see was the Blood Sands. When Vailond asked about the Autumn Staelgar in the darkness before sunrise, the hooded droid pointed them further into the close hot dimness of the lamp-pricked cave. Another directed him to a series of carvings on the wall.

“Are you serious?” said Hiravias. “You could just tell me and save me several hours.”

“I cannot hunt for you,” droned the druid.

“Fine. But don’t expect me to invite you to my next hunt.” He brought up a hand to hover over the wall carvings, and took pains to read them aloud.

It was strange stuff, about the hunt, about souls being torn in two by the Staelgar, rearranged, built each to the stronger. Hiravias incessantly scratched the stump of his ear as he read. Vailond beside him sometimes whispered as she sounded out the words.

He turned away from the fourth panel they’d found in this warren. “I don’t know. What does all this have to do with me?”

Vailond’s brow knitted up. “The Autumn Staelgar isn’t just an eater. It’s part of the cycle, part of the detail the Wheel doesn’t think about. You can see that, can’t you? Galawain chose you for this work.”

He looked at her sidelong. “You’re very keen on Galawain.”

“And very successful on hunts. It sounds to me like the Autumn Staelgar has a place. Breaking souls down, but proving them, too.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Enough. We have some other gods to please.”

They were walking along another beautiful grassy pathway between groves when Hiravias overtook Vailond. “Can I run something by you?” he said.

She favored him with a look. “Sure.”

“I’ve been thinking. Shocking but true.”

Vailond looked alert. It wasn’t clear to him whether she had understood his joke, must less enjoyed it.

“You realize you’re very excited about how my staelgar form is a gift and a challenge from Galawain.”

“I think we’d all be happier believing that.”

“Well, that just lost two dozen notches of credibility.”

“Sorry.” One corner of her mouth twitched up.

“Bear with me,” he said. It occurred to him that she might not take this well. She hadn’t stabbed anybody who didn’t have it coming in his presence, but she did shoot things on little notice.

“Well,” said Hiravias.

“Hm?” said Vailond.

“Your special status as Watcher.”

The corner of her mouth was definitely not up.

“Was that a challenge from Galawain, too? Something to overcome?”

Vailond looked like he’d slammed her between the eyes. “A challenge is a gift to be opened. Are you calling this a _gift_?”

He stood his ground. If she wanted to batter him with insights he could damn well return the favor. “You tell me, worshipper. It's obvious no physical thing can cow you, so he reached for the next best ailment.”

“Hiravias, being a Watcher is killing me.”

“All the best conquests try.”

She chewed on that for a few seconds. But she was angry at something other than him. “I don't want that to be the answer.”

“I understand that. Believe me. If I find an angle where it's actually a gift....”

“Tell me.”

“Consider that a promise. We victims of divine favor ought to stick together.”

*

Vailond led the way. If she wanted a god’s favor to enter Sun in Shadow, she needed to start that process at the altars inside this sacred place. Sacred places made her nervous, but she had no choice.

At the base of the great trees she heard voices behind her. “Missionaries. We must silence their heresy.” When she spun, she saw purple fires over the scene. And Thaos, standing, watching. Nobody else could see it. “Come, then. Can you see the necessity? What was Iovara to you?”

“My mentor,” Vailond heard herself say. “You know this.”

“I know that you must be able to cast off that bond. The truth demands it.”

She stumbled forward. It was Aloth who caught her, and he pushed her back just as quickly, muttering an apology.

“Where are we?” she said.

“Lost,” said Durance. “But you were seeking answers in Teir Evron.”

“Oh. Of course.”

The pair of great trees formed a tower. The tower was two great trees. Paths ran along its veins, through a world-high wall of thick wood, and into a chamber.

Vailond led the way, and the cool stillness silenced her. The room was perfectly round. It was studded with low altars, and a spire in the middle. All around the edges stood arched bookshelves. Vailond could almost hear them whispering to her. And the floor…as she walked in it flashed a pearly white and darkened into an image of the night sky, glistening, deep as the sky above.

There was an altar in the east. Vailond approached and touched it. It was warm, and it sent a shiver up her arm.

She turned around. The stars were in formations here, matching gods.

Edér walked right away to the three with the smaller rays. “Three stars,” he said. “Eothas. No sun, though. Huh.”

She went to Galawain first. First and always. If anyone was still willing to help her, it would be him. The others moved around her, all except Pallegina, who stood to one side fingering her mace.

When she prayed, for once, he answered.

“Cub,” he said in her head. “You have been faithful through all your hunts.”

“Lord,” she said. “Why did you let them do this to me?”

“A god does not intercede directly.”

No. That wasn’t enough. “You let them make me a Watcher. I gave you first blood in all my kills and you gave me a little extra strength to keep walking while going completely insane! That was not an even trade, lord!”

“You have survived it.”

“For how long? A few more weeks? A few more hours? I needed you!”

“Enough. You must deal with Woedica’s favored?”

“Without your help, again?”

He ignored that. “Go to Sun-in-Shadow. The souls I have won will catch you.”

She fell backward and staggered upright. People were scattered around the room, watching, listening.

Durance hadn’t moved a muscle. He was standing over the flame.


	81. Hunters and Hunts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Teir Evron, Vailond receives quests for the favor of the gods. Hiravias and Tyrhos have a moment. Sagani makes an unexpected discovery.

In Teir Evron, Vailond sought the favor of some god, any god, that she wasn’t angry with.

Hylea, a cloud of birds and a flutelike voice, merited an angry harrumph from Pallegina. The goddess’s plight sounded simple: something had driven her worshippers away from their eyrie temple.

“Edér? Aloth?” said Vailond. “Brawn and magic are probably the way. As soon as we’re done here.”

“Of course,” said Aloth. He looked at her like he’d slept with her, however chastely. She turned away.

Wael and Abydon had nothing to say. Berath slammed in an understanding complete in what felt like a year but might only have been a second. Vailond pitched forward.

“Whoa,” said Kana, catching her. “What god is that?”

“Berath…spoke…to me,” she whispered.

“It didn’t hurt you, did it?” said Sagani.

“It wanted to return someone to the Wheel. An archdruid. He’s been using blood sacrifice to extend his life too long. He hides in the Blood Sands.”

“Hunting immortal prey,” said Hiravias. “Is there anything more exciting?”

“Well, there’s the Padwin girls fighting in mud that one time,” said Edér.

Hiravias rolled his eye. “You’re really a man of simple tastes, aren’t you?”

“I never met a picky man who was happy. All right, Aloth and I are off to the goddess’s temple. Should clear this up in no time.”

*

The druids waited at the end of the bridge over the Twin Elms’ brook. They looked at no one but Hiravias.

“Brother,” said one. “They say you are the autumn staelgar.”

“Actually its more handsome cousin,” said Hiravias. “Why, did you want an autograph?”

“It would do us honor to see your beast form.”

Hiravias looked at Vailond, for some reason. He shrugged. “All right.”

The transformation was a twist, a race of his coarse orange hair to fur his entire body, and a fall to all fours. The staelgar’s catlike maw gaped.

Tyrhos barked. Again. Hiravias felt a little of the nerve-dancing hum of the wild, but he also felt a lot of being an orlan who didn’t like being bossed around. He walked straight up to the wolf. He was maybe twice Tyrhos’ size, and that felt good. Tyrhos growled. Vailond was saying comforting things, but Vailond only ever understood two legs plus what Tyrhos chose to show her.

Hiravias reached out and cuffed the side of Tyrhos’ head.

Tyrhos twisted aside and bit at Hiravias’ paw. Hiravias pulled his paw away and cuffed Tyrhos’ other side. The wolf, to his credit, stood in the middle, snarling at everything, rather than going haring after the latest insult.

Which was smart, because Hiravias tapped the first side of his head again. When the wolf growled Hiravias reached out with his other paw and firmly pushed Tyrhos’ head to the ground.

Tyrhos squirmed and growled. Vailond was at his side now. “He’s our friend,” she said. “You don’t have to bite him.”

Cautiously, Hiravias let him up. Very cautiously, he nosed in to stare at Tyrhos from up close.

Tyrhos lunged.

Hiravias headbutted him. The impact hurt, but the wolf scrambled away and didn’t come at him again. Carefully, lightly, Hiravias crept close and pressed Tyrhos’ head down again. This time the wolf whined and went limp. When Hiravias moved in to lick the animal’s nose, he got no resistance.

Vailond was watching, grinning. “I need to learn to do that.”

Hiravias shifted again and stretched his strange short limbs. “It takes a few years.”

“You're not just a staelgar.”

“No, I'm also a fabulous—well. Maybe not just a staelgar.”

*

Sagani, Hiravias, the old women were to go to the Blood Sands, and Sagani was happy to do it. Only, she had been fingering the adra figurine in her pocket ever since they reached Twin Elms. The fake Watcher had directed her here once. The real Watcher had, too.

She snuck it out and looked at it for the millionth time. She put it back in her pocket before she realized that it had changed.

It was glowing.

“Vail,” she said past a lump in her throat. “The figurine.”

The elf instantly slowed to let Sagani take the lead. “Follow it,” she said. “I’ll watch for souls.”

The figurine got brighter, and brighter. Sagani broke into a trot.

They were teetering at the northern edge of Twin Elms when they reached a little glade. Sagani rounded a line of boulders and stopped. The scene ahead of her was ordinary: six hunters and a stag that was panting its last breaths.

“Vail?” she muttered.

“Oh,” said Vail. “Oh. Sagani, it’s…it’s the stag.”

An animal? A dying one? For five years of rehearsing her village’s changes, her people’s names old and new? Sagani stomped toward the stricken animal. “Five minutes,” she said to the hunters. “This won’t take long.”

“Who are you?” said one of the hunters.

She stood tall. “I am Sagani of Massuk. This is the elder of my village, Persoq. I must have words.” That was all she had to say to them. She knelt by the stag.

There were four arrows in its flank and one bloody gash at the back of its neck. She ran her fingertips from its antlers down to over one eye. “Persoq,” she said thickly. “Oh, Persoq, there is so much to see. And so little time.”

Five years, for whatever she could rush. She swallowed and began to give him names.

If he died before her litany ended, would she have to follow his next turn on the Wheel? Could even Vailond help her to repeat this process? Couldn’t she…couldn’t she have the slightest acknowledgment from the man she sought that all this had been worth it, that in the end, he understood?

She gave him names.

*

Vailond half wanted to chase the hunters away from their kill. But burying Persoq seemed a waste, and eating him seemed wrong. She let them be.

She let Sagani be, too. Five years was a long time to spend for five minutes with a dying animal. Sagani didn’t ask her for her insight and Vailond didn’t shove it in her face.

Edér, kindly, set a hand on Sagani’s shoulder as they turned away. She accepted it.

It should have been more. Sagani tucked the adra figuring, now dark, back into her pocket.

“That means I go home,” she said quietly. She huffed out a breath and spoke in wonder. “That means I go home.”

Vailond looked to Hiravias. “Want to take out an immortal first?”

“Oh.” Sagani looked up. “Yes. I think I will.”


	82. Gods and Monsters (Vailond, Edér)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond's party seeks the favor of the gods: Rymrgand, Berath, and Hylea.

Not every altar responded. Not every vision was comprehensible. Not every combination…well, Pallegina had hard words for Hylea, supposedly the sponsor of her godlike identity. Vailond quietly cheered for her as she demanded answers about her own obviousness. About the gift she wasn’t allowed to turn away.

Aloth and Edér offered to investigate some mystery that had chased the Hyleans away from her high-perched temple. Hiravias, Sagani, and the Grieving Mother chose to seek a figure that Berath said had cheated death for too long. Kana ran to study the ancient carvings at the dock where waited the boat to the Burial Isle and Sun-in-Shadow. And Vailond, careful, chose Pallegina and Durance to run an errand for Rymrgand of death itself. He wanted some breach closed in a frozen temple.

Rymrgand hadn’t said everything when he spoke of his temple in Noonfrost.

“And who among us is surprised?” Durance said annoyedly.

For the temple was full of priests, and the ice wall Vailond was to close was in the very back, and everyone she spoke to either attacked her or begged her to let them through that wall.

“Why?” she said.

“We seek to enter the Great White,” said a priest, “and so end our cycle of rebirth. As He made us to live in the moment of death, He will be served by our return to the Great Breach.”

“Our orders are to close the Breach, not let people through,” said Pallegina.

“And leave them tied to Rymrgand in a place like this,” said Vailond. Gods’ gifts continued to suck.

“You don’t intend to defy a god, do you?” said Durance. “You would do well to consider the consequences of rebellion.”

“No. I have ignored my conscience once already in this place,” said Pallegina. “I would grant these people peace.”

“I think that’s fair,” said Vailond. “Durance?”

“I don’t need ice to treat me as fire did. Consider yourself warned.”

Pallegina extended the blue crystal meant to close the Breach. With a little will it opened instead. The priests cried out in joy and ran into their frigid Beyond.

“Well, if it makes ‘em happy,” said Vailond. “Close it?”

Pallegina was leaning toward the wall, pressing the crystal into place. “Already done.”

“If you are determined to grab the balls of every god in the pantheon, you can count me out,” said Durance.

“No,” said Vailond. “Stay. We’re so close.”

They raced back through Oldsong and across Elm Grove into peaceful, cool Teir Evron. Vailond smoothed her hair and knelt to the altar marked by Rymrgand’s aurochs sigil.

“You have not done as I asked,” said the low black voice in her head.

“Your people were suffering. I helped them.”

“All things wear down in time,” said the god. “You disrupted the order. You openly defied me. Hurl yourself into Sun in Shadow, if you wish. Die, or else battle Thaos and fail. I will have no part in it.”

She fell back, scrambled a bit, found her feet. “Really?” she said. “Like that?”

“Divine ice is kinder than fire,” boomed Durance.

“You still have Galawain,” said Pallegina.

“I don’t _want_ Galawain,” said Vailond.

Sagani led her party in less than an hour later. She nodded at Vailond. “Tell Berath it’s done.”

Berath, like a sack of bricks, acknowledged. The souls it ruled would bear her down.

“So we’re just waiting on Aloth and Edér, yes?” said Kana. “Oh, there will be songs written of this day! Chosen of the gods themselves!”

Oh, now that was too far. “You and me both,” she said. “Maybe when we’re done we'll get some songs.” Granted, she would be dead by then, but it seemed to make him happy. “Come,” she added. “Let’s go find them.”

*

Hylea’s temple was a downright fancy piece of stonework at the tip-top of the mountain north of Twin Elms. On a quick search it wasn’t obvious why it had been abandoned. Whatever had troubled this place, it hadn’t even left bodies. The investigation was off to a bleak start.

There was a cleft in the raw stone next to the path, and Edér and Aloth took places inside, facing one another over a narrow notch. Edér thought that Vail the huntress would be perfect for this wait, but she wasn’t here. He wanted to do this right for her.

“She’s getting erratic,” said Aloth. Edér cast him a sharp look only to see that he was staring down the notch.

Edér shrugged. “I understand why she’s sore at Galawain.”

“But he is a god. Rejecting his favor? She is resourceful, but she’s not immortal. She needs to take better care of herself.”

“She’s tired.”

“I know. I wish I could do more, but I can’t, not now.”

“She’ll come around.”

“You can say that. She would forgive you anything.” His jaw worked. “I think she loves you.”

This was a horrific turn for the conversation to take, but Edér tried to stay cool. “How can you tell?”

“She makes every decision based on what you want or what she thinks you want. She laughs at your jokes, for gods' sake.”

“She's forty years older'n me.” Elves.

“That historically hasn't stopped a great many people.” Aloth snuck him one fiery look. “What are you going to do about it?”

Exactly what he’d been doing since he’d noticed her favor. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? The woman has an emotion that isn't ‘hooray I killed something,’ and you want to—”

“I reckon it'll blow over.”

Aloth’s look was longer this time. “You’re not interested in her.”

“Not especially. She's a good woman. I just...haven't much, these last few years. Don't usually think about it.”

Aloth returned his gaze to the notch between them. “That's your prerogative, but you're insane.”

“You want I should put in a good word?”

“I? Me? After what happened?” Aloth was sputtering. Edér expected Iselmyr to pop out and say exactly what Aloth thought of Vail, but Aloth stayed in control. “I understood when I came clean about my former allegiance that we would never have close dealings again.”

Edér nodded thoughtfully. “That took nerve. Was it easier than keeping quiet?”

Aloth’s shoulders slumped. “No. It was much harder.”

“She likes you, Aloth. She’s grateful, and she likes you. She'll remember that in the long run.”

A hot wind snapped their attention back toward the temple. There was a large, scaly face between.

The dragon said, “Am I interrupting?”


	83. Flight and Fall (Vailond, Pallegina, Aloth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond's friends face the scourge of Hylea. Then, with missions in place, they reach the pit of Sun in Shadow.

Aloth and Edér came down the mountain like boulders, bouncing from time to time on their vast downward leaps.

“Is it coming?” yelled Edér.

“Is what coming?” yelled Sagani.

“Dragon,” yelped Aloth.

The word electrified the team. Vailond and Sagani readied their crossbow and bow.

Edér and Aloth reached the level and looked up. “Gone,” said Aloth.

“So, ah, we know what drove out Hylea’s priests,” Edér said sheepishly.

Vail and Tyrhos looked up together. The hunt tickled her insides. “Think we can do it?” she said.

“Well…” Aloth said coyly.

“I’d need help with the flying parts,” said Edér. “But we have the numbers.”

“I shoot things,” said Vail. “It can’t fly forever.”

Now they climbed the stones that Aloth and Edér had bounced down. Edér led the way, going slowly, seeming to study every shelf and flat point they passed. He wasn’t satisfied until they reached the large flat playing field that had the stone temple at one end.

“That’s as much terrain advantage as we get,” he said. “Ranged people may want to take cover in the rocks at this end.”

“And don’t get distracted talking,” muttered Aloth. “My shield may not hold a second time.”

Vailond’s heart swelled. A dragon. A real, live, mature dragon.

It howled as it swept down from blocking the sky. Apparently Edér and Aloth had run through its patience some time ago. “My clutch will grow here!” it screamed.

Oh, and who allowed that? “Defend your clutch. But don’t defend it here.”

In reply the dragon only shrieked.

“On Edér,” she barked, and her friends fanned with Edér front and center. From here everything was finding weak spots on that dragon’s scaled and feathered body. Her wings, first of all. While Tyrhos latched himself to an ankle and held on, Vailond shot holes all through one wing. The dragon could kick the wolf off, maybe, but she wouldn’t take him upward.

Pallegina flanked the dragon, sending it staggering toward Edér and catching its return. The rest of the party moved in a synchronization that Vailond had surely never given them. Aloth shielded them from the dragon’s breath and harassed the creature with conjured lights and shadows. The Grieving Mother reached toward the dragon’s head on every downturn and did something Vailond couldn’t see, something that slowed their target more each time. Hiravias savaged the dragon’s wings with long red claw marks. Durance sharpened their wits and strengthened their arms. Kana interrupted his own singing with cries of amazement. And Sagani stood by Vailond and punched holes through wing after wing.

They worked as a team. Like friends should.

When the dragon collapsed to the rocky floor, Vailond raced toward it. “Axe,” she said to Edér. Maybe she was selfish, but she wanted the killing blow.

She had never cut a throat by hacking it with an undersized axe before, but it did the job.

“We need to dress this,” she said. “Dragon scales. Whatever’s in its stomach. It….” She looked around. “Where’s Tyrhos?”

Grieving Mother looked away. “There,” she said. There was something in her voice, something Vailond had never heard before. It was the cold reality of discovery, not the warm one of a constructed memory.

Vailond ran to the steps of the temple.

Tyrhos lay bonelessly at the bottom of a gray stone monolith. His breath came short and strained. She couldn’t see the blood but his ribcage wasn’t centered right. “Tyrhos,” she said. “Oh, Tyrhos, you’re fine, you’re going to be fine…Durance?”

The others had gathered, but Durance put up his hands and backed off. “You know what brought us here. A goddess's will...”

Vailond looked up, unbelieving. “Hylea didn't want this!”

“There are other goddesses.”

“This is not your Magran’s trial! This is my friend!”

“And you think those are separate? After all this time?”

“I’m starting to see why you’re her most popular companion,” Hiravias said sardonically. “Get out of my way.” The orlan scurried past Durance and knelt by the wounded wolf. “Oh, some clans would leave you here,” he said quietly as he touched Tyrhos’ matted fur.

“You’re one of the other clans,” said Vailond. It wasn’t a request.

“Here, then. This world is full of life. It just takes a little something to remind you of that.” He hummed tunelessly. He passed a hand over Tyrhos’ stomach. Something shifted and tightened under the matted fur.

“Wash him off and you’ll never know he shits like the rest of us,” Hiravias said brightly. “You’re welcome.”

Vailond hugged Tyrhos first. “Hm?” she said softly. “Stay with me.”

Tyrhos scrabbled to his feet. He whined and touched his nose to hers, then shook free and shoved his nose between Hiravias’ legs. She laughed and looked up. “Can I hug you?”

“Well, your wolf's making himself comfortable.” In a second she had her arms around him. “Mind the ear!” he yelped.

“What ear?” she said, more curious than joking.

“I still feel it when I heal. Not enough to bring it back, mind you.”

She seized his upper arms. “I owe you everything.”

He raised an eyebrow and scratched his back. “Well, that’s dramatic.”

Edér spoke from behind her. “She means it, though.”

“Well, let’s finish the gods’ sparring before we talk of repaying debts.”

Sagani trotted back toward the dragon, drawing a long knife. Good. She would know how best to take the necessary parts from their prey. Old, intelligent, defensive, but anything that attacked Vailond’s friends was prey.

The others milled and drifted toward the huge carcass. Only Durance remained. Durance was staring.

Durance’s contribution to this group had just been replaced.

People were hard. People were really, horribly hard. But when Vailond looked at him she knew. The bottom dropping out from someone’s world looked like that. Then she waited for him to look at her. His dark eyes looked hollow, and she knew why. She didn’t need him, or his lectures, or his mystery, or his highly tuned sensitivity to whores.

But just then, he needed her. She put on a cocky grin. “I’m not done with you yet.”

It might have been gratitude, that twitch of his mouth. He would never admit it.

*

Hylea granted them the souls that were rescued in Sun in Shadow.

Berath granted them the souls that were destined in Sun in Shadow.

Galawain granted them the souls that were won in Sun in Shadow.

Rymrgand and the others gave them nothing. Pallegina expected this.

Knowing this, they took the lone ferryman’s boat to the Burial Isle, a sacred place even among sacred places. The dead came here, and little else. Pallegina climbed up steep rows and over fallen stones to a flat place from where she could see the falling tiers of green grasses, the mirrorlike stillness of the gray lake, and the dim shapes of trees beyond. She looked at the center of the mosaic floor, at the hole wide enough to take three abreast with arms outstretched. Sun in Shadow. Pallegina felt that Thaos would be here, and though she had little faith in gifts she could not grasp, she had a feeling that this time she saw clearly.

Vailond walked right up to the edge and stopped. She knelt and scratched her great gray wolf’s ears. “You don’t have to come with me,” she said softly. Then, louder, looking up at everyone, “You don’t have to come with me.” Before anyone could react she was on her feet and then leaping and then falling into the darkness.

Tyrhos howled a bone-shivering howl and went in after her.

“Wait,” the old woman said raggedly, and stepped in as well.

Everyone else looked at each other. “You think the souls or whoever would let us through?” said Edér. “Slowly?”

“I think we don’t have a choice,” said Aloth. “We cannot leave her there.”

“Her wolf is nice, but there’s only one of him,” said Hiravias. “And I want to see these gods’ favor.” He made a vague salute and dove in.

“All right, somebody needs to be sensible,” said Edér. He knelt at the edge, put his hands to the stone, and tipped in.

“Here, where no mortal should tread…I must follow the one doing the stomping.” Kana sat on the edge, drummed his heels against the slick stone, then slid down into darkness.

“What do you think, Itumaak?” The restless fox at Sagani’s knees streaked for the entrance and jumped in. At a slower jog, Sagani followed.

“Magran….” said Durance. “No.” He stalked straight off the edge as though there were ground to take him.

Pallegina marched like a soldier, right off the edge.

Which left Aloth alone. He heard no screams, nor crunching of bone. He thought about his options, about what was likely waiting.

“Vail,” he said. “I know you don’t expect this. I know you don’t believe I would do anything for you.” Maybe that was why he had to do it.

He kept his hands free of his grimoire, and he leaped into the dark.

*

The room was much broader than the shaft that had led to it. There were high metal spikes in a grid. If those weird gauzy masses of souls had chosen, they would have directed her directly onto a spit.

Aloth landed last, light on his feet, and sent up a bronze sphere to act as lamp.

“I can’t sense Thaos,” said Vailond. “Wish I could. Stay with me, if you want.”

The hallway they passed into was huge. The floor was glistening mosaic. The walls were spotless tile. The ceiling was far, far above. The air was resistant, sliding like a beaded curtain over her forehead and shoulders as she walked. Souls, souls everywhere. Her old teacher Iovara, tortured on the rack, refusing to surrender one truth, one terrible truth.

Vailond mentally begged her to stop. Must Vailond stand by and watch the dear friend of her previous life die? But Iovara did not take any of it back.

Voices followed Vailond closely here. She turned a corner and stopped dead. A gnarled man with missing nose and ears tottered into her view. He was covered in scabs and sores, hairless, obscene.

Beside him billowed a mass of eyes, all different sizes and shapes, shifting, changing, all in more of a cloud than a person.

“Skaen,” she said, from reputation alone. “Wael.”

“You have the favor of many gods,” said Wael. Its voice, too, shifted and bobbed as it spoke.

“Yet plot against them all,” said Skaen.

“No, I don’t,” said Vailond.

“The souls that Thaos has trapped,” said Wael. “Scatter them. Let no one know or guess where they went.”

“Instead of actually restoring people? Why would I do that?”

Skaen bared his teeth. “There is no purpose. That’s the point.”

Vailond stared at them. “You guys need hobbies.”

“Vailond,” Hirivias said urgently. “Forgive me, gods. My friend is under the influence of several months’ sleep deprivation.”

“I offered her the gift of one definite answer,” said Wael. “Do not forget that.” And then, in a second, they were gone.

Hiravias jumped into Vailond’s way. “Would you mind not sassing gods who have wide-area attacks?”

“They’re being childish,” said Vailond. “Come on. If we hurry maybe nobody else will ask us to buy their groceries.”


	84. The Soul of the Matter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond and friends reach Sun-in-Shadow, and face the underground city. Vailond makes a decision about her enemy and the final machine.

The pillar was a formation of luminous adra, too large for Vailond’s entire party to join hands around. Things slid under the surface, wisps and things like humans.

One, shining, front and center.

Vailond knew what to say. She’d seen this woman tortured and executed, all part of the voices she always heard. She knew what to say. “Iovara. My friend.”

The thought that some of the voices Vailond heard might be her own made her brain twist in uncomfortable ways. Still, her old mentor Iovara was here, and she was opposing Thaos because Thaos was lying to the world. Vailond had _helped_ him lie to the world.

Now there was more.

The gods were not forever-correct creators. They were constructs made by the ancient Engwithans, the Builders in more than name. Thaos meant to increase their power by calling them gods, by spreading their favor. He meant to empower Woedica to change her rank among the gods. All it cost was a nation's souls.

Iovara had died because she found out the truth, and tried to say it. In the end, she asked Vailond for forgiveness. But Vailond was not the person she was looking for, not anymore.

Vailond reeled. “If it looks like a god, and it smites like a god, it’s a god,” she muttered desperately.

“Run that by us again?” said Hiravias.

“I have to find him,” said Vailond. “This has to stop.”

“But we get the explanation, right?” said the orlan. “You are explaining _some_ thing that’s going on in your head?”

“I am dying,” she said hoarsely. “And if I go to the Wheel before he does, then all of this was for _nothing_!” She stalked past him, further into the dark.

Sun-in-Shadow was an entire underground city. Mosaic platforms sent arcing bridges over echoing black voids. Souls streamed around in Vailond’s vision, and some of them met her and streaked away to illuminate huge column lanterns. It didn’t seem like the kind of place you lived in – no houses, no pipes, few buildings – but it had the look of a place you did a pilgrimage to. Like you could be close to the gods here. The deeper they went, the broader the paths, the longer the pauses in the echo of a shout over a bridge’s low rail. After a while Vailond stopped shouting. Souls wandered, touched, flew to light her path.

At least something here was trying to help her. She walked with confidence, but she listened for the footsteps behind her.

The path was an arcing glory of golden tiles. It brought her to a staircase that ran down into a flat circle…

“Vail!” She ignored Edér. She surged like coming back home.

She flung the words ahead. “Make me not a Watcher!”

Thaos looked up from something he’d been reading. “Ah. You come at last.”

Vailond watched Thaos, the wide robe, the elaborate headdress. The end would scream like the beginning. Only, she had faced him alone last time.

Kana watched Vailond and saw a wave against a pillar. Centuries rocked between them, and the wave might yet win.

Edér watched the cult head. He didn't look so big. And Vail had the look of a woman ready to kick. Time to see if ego could best gumption.

Aloth watched Vailond and saw the end of mercy. If he had hastened that savage edge—perhaps he had done some good after all. She would survive, even if she hated him.

Mother watched the ancient. Instinct warned her not to seek his mind. She did not care to die this day. Vailond burned, small but unbreakable, and She of all people knew that a child becoming could kill the parent.

Durance watched Vailond. He was no longer the man with the advantage, with the superiority of service. He was...her friend, and he would die here if he had to to unleash her on the gods.

Hiravias watched Thaos. He didn't look like much. Still, there had to be something to him. Was she about to get revenge?

Pallegina watched Vailond. Her nerve before the Brotherhood, the duc, the dragon, the living and the dead...yet Vailond had rough edges. Pallegina had no illusion that Thaos was a small threat.

Sagani watched Thaos. Well, this was more impressive than a dying stag. She had never seen Vailond try to break a soul before, but she had a feeling she was about to start.

Vailond planted her feet and shouted. “Undo it. Make me not a Watcher.”

Thaos’s helm shook back and forth. “I can no more close your mind to souls than you could close a window to floodwaters. No. You interfered, you got an unexpected reaction, you can expect nothing else for your depredations. There was a time, lifetimes ago, when you would have considered this insight a high honor.”

“I’m not old-me. You leave old-me out of this. This is about me, and your ritual, and how do I make it stop?”

Thaos stared at her like she was something to study. “You die, I imagine. I have no storybook solution for you.”

“Then you’re worthless.” She shot as she spoke. Tyrhos blazed past her shoulder and leaped.

Thaos blurred and reappeared six feet to the left. Tyrhos landed skidding, snarling.

Vailond wound her crossbow. “Why? This whole time? What the hell did Woedica offer you?”

Thaos smiled with black teeth. “Service is its own reward.”

“This. Ends. Here.” She shot as Tyrhos darted low. Thaos turned in a lazy full circle, pushing pure force against bolt and wolf alike.

“You believed in me, once,” he said. “You killed for me. You can submit again. Wouldn’t that be restful?”

That was about the time the staelgar charged. Vailond made a note that if she lived, she would live being friends with Hiravias in any form.

Around this golden circle there stood a dozen or more animats, adra constructs with only the dullest of souls bound in. They rumbled here and there, only sometimes seeming to remember that there was a fight going on. When Vailond got to Thaos’ throat his soul shot like a bolt itself into one of the lumbering golems. Vailond pointed. Her friends attacked. Construct through construct, Thaos fled, Vailond pointed, friends followed.

He came back to his own bleeding body when no two pieces of adra were left hanging together. He couldn’t speak; Vailond had gotten to his neck. She stood over him. “You lose. You _bastard_ …if I win or if I don’t, you lose.”

She ended that shell, too.

She looked up. Her friends were brushing away adra pieces and checking bruises. “I want to kill him,” she said, “but he’ll just come back.”

“Until we convince Berath to stop offering him clear passage,” said Kana. “Surely it dislikes Thaos’ immortality as much as anyone’s.”

“Hiravias?”

“Yes?”

“What I’m asking you to do….”

The orlan tensed. “You want me to actually be the Autumn Staelgar. Have I ever mentioned that you are a font of bad ideas? I’ll put almost anything in my mouth, but not that.”

“So it’s up to me.” Vailond breathed out hard. “I want to shred him. But he does deserve to come back, and if he remembers anything, let him remember that he failed.”

The motion felt totally natural, wherever it came from. She released his soul to the Wheel. Let the gods have their amusement with him before he was reborn.

Yes. Let his entire past be the story of how he failed, and how he failed to an insignificant, practically illiterate elf.

It was something, at least.

*

The Engwithan machine of Sun-in-Shadow was bigger than the one outside Gilded Vale, than the one in Heritage Hill, than the one in Clîaban Rilag. Here as before there were words about souls and directions, but nothing about a Watcher.

And yet, this time, there was a bigger problem. It wasn’t about healing her. It wasn’t about pleasing these things that everybody called gods. It wasn’t even about getting even. Vailond sensed the restless sea of trapped souls around her. With a few motions set the souls loose upon the world to join with those hardy folk who had survived the gods’ war this long. As the Autumn Staelgar tore, so his friend the elf would patch back together. It seemed right. The Dyrwood would be stranger for the infusion of soul energy.

Fatigue dogged her hands and dragged at her eyes. It was just…all…with Thaos gone…

She willed herself to finish the machine’s release, and to finish breaking an internal mechanism that would prevent its ever being used again. She got that far before she fell into darkness.


	85. Many Partings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vailond and friends receive their final understanding of Thaos’s quest. Then they return to Caed Nua…home, or a starting point. This marks the final critical Vailond/Aloth conversation.

More trances. More screams. Edér had no idea what had happened with Thaos, even though he’d been there to watch the death.

Vailond would explain, he knew. Slowly, over weeks, between little touches and a lot of listening. She would explain.

Just as soon as she woke up.

Everyone helped clear a collapsed path to the surface, and Edér carried the feather-light elf up from the depths of Sun-in-Shadows. The Burial Isle was all hills and darkness. He looked around, keeping her fevered warmth secure against his chest, and lowered her toward the glimmering mosaic near the mouth.

“Wait,” said Aloth. He unrolled his blanket and opened it to accept her. Edér placed her on it and they folded her in together. Tyrhos lay by her side, his muzzle on her arm.

Sagani was building a fire just two paces away. “She likes the fires,” she explained to no one. Edér nodded. He understood.

The others were moving, unpacking, preparing to rest under the slow steady wind. Because Vailond had made it safe for them do so. Edér took out his pipe. He wasn't tired.

The doubt ripped at him. What if her victory did not cure her visions? What if this was salvation for the whole Dyrwood and not her? “What if she screams tonight?”

Aloth shuddered. “That doesn't bear thinking about.”

One by one his companions dropped off. Edér ended up nursing a sputtering pipe and winking at Tyrhos, who had kept ears up and eyes open the whole time he was resting on his master. When it started to seem like the wolf wanted to be the last one down out of pride, Edér turned over and went to sleep.

*

“I should explain that,” said Vailond.

For once she had been the last to wake. The others were slowly going about their breakfasts and pretending they weren’t dragging. But Vailond sat up, pushed the tips of her hair behind her pointed ears, and cleared her throat.

“Hey,” said Edér. “You’re all right.” He went to her side, sat, and offered an arm. She tucked herself against his side, which meant he couldn’t see her face as she fought for words. He just felt her tension and heard a new, hard note in her voice.

“Thaos has been coming through the Wheel intact for ages, like Lady Webb said. He’s a servant of Woedica. And for her, he told everybody that the gods were real.”

“And?” Kana looked riveted.

“They’re not, not as these creators who know everything. The Engwithans made-became the gods. All this bullshit about worshiping—you can do it, and they’re powerful—but somebody made them up. I…the person I used to be…got a dear friend killed for that.”

Hiravias shook his head slowly. “But…Galawain?”

“It was good while it lasted,” Vailond said tiredly. “And Wael’s barely changed at all.”

“This raises so many more questions,” said Kana. Edér shot him a warning look and he stilled. The man was really all right, just excitable.

Vailond stood, steadying herself on Edér’s shoulder. “I want to go home,” she said.

*

They didn’t talk about it on the road to Caed Nua. They walked together, more slowly than they had in weeks past. They talked about the road, about cities, about things long ago and far away that somehow they hadn’t yet shared.

Vailond slept silently, and reported no nightmares when she woke. As far as anyone including herself could tell she was still a Watcher, but without Thaos hammering at her soul she could control it now.

They reached Caed Nua. The Steward greeted them by name and with enthusiasm. There was a feast set in the great hall, and people cheered them, and didn’t mind giving Vailond their names again so she could thank them personally.

It was a clear night. The stars remembered what they were shining for and you could tell. Slowly they formed a circle in the little amphitheater by the western gate. The steps were gray stone, freshly replaced in some places, covered in a moss Vailond had ordered preserved in others. The grass in the center was still high and green, as yet untrampled by the arts. The night was warm and the party had taken off their armor. Pallegina seemed half her normal size. Edér was still big and broad. Hiravias had replaced his Wael-eye eyepatch with a polished dragonscale fragment on a string. Itumaak had curled inside the nook of Tyrhos’s curled body, and so far as anyone could tell, they were both asleep.

“I’m staying here,” said Vailond. “You’re all welcome here.”

Sagani smiled. “I have business back in Massuk.”

Vailond smiled. “They’re going to love you.”

“To be honest, I don’t know what I’m getting into. The last woman on such a quest never came back.”

“You’ll be a hero. They’ll make blankets for you.”

“Anything. As long as I’m not forgotten.”

“Your husband. Your children.”

Sagani smiled. And smiled. And didn’t try not to smile.

“I must return to the Republics,” said Pallegina. “I have completed my task, as ordered.”

“Thank you,” said Vailond. “You can always come back.”

Pallegina inclined her feather-crowned head. “You are gracious.”

“On good days.”

“I, uh.” Edér shifted. “I’m thinking about putting down roots someplace that isn’t Gilded Vale.”

“Here?” said Vailond, quickly.

“No, this is for you. I’d like a small town atmosphere. I’m…sorry, if that’s not…”

“No, it’s good,” Vailond stammered. “You deserve…what you want. Keep in touch.”

“Once we’ve answered certain questions about the Paths of Od Nua I will return to my people,” said Kana. “They will want to know what became of Gabrannos.”

“It was worth it,” Vailond said. “Wasn’t it?”

“My friend…not what I came for, but what I found. Yes.”

“Good.”

“To hear a mother rejoice,” Grieving Mother said softly. “I must make the Birthing Bell what it was.”

“Or help women here, if you like.”

She smiled faintly. “Some past, with my present, my friend. I may take the middle path and return to Dyrford.”

“You’ll be birthing stronger babies.”

“I hope,” she said. “You gave us hope.”

“I must see a man about a whore,” said Durance. “Just because she was false doesn’t mean I’m happy to leave with a lighter purse and a calmer body.”

“Are you going to go with someone?”

“I…?” For the first time, he seemed to be at a loss for words. She gave him the moments. “No.”

“You can always get a hot meal here.”

“And have you not scraped my depths enough times already?”

“I wasn’t counting.”

He harrumphed. “ _If_ my path takes me back here, I will stomp on your doorstep.”

“Well, good.”

“I must go back to my tribe, wherever their wanderings have taken them,” said Hiravias. “I must share what I’ve learned about myself and about Galawain.”

“May they be more sensible this time,” said Vailond.

“I’m not holding my breath, but at least they’ll see I did some good without eating anyone.”

“Even when I tempted you to eat someone.”

Things were quiet.

“I must return to the Leaden Key,” said Aloth.

“ _What?_ ” It wasn’t clear which group of people said it.

“Someone ought to dismantle it. If we are to restore the study of animancy under cooler heads…someone must sabotage the Key’s operations. Perhaps show its members a better way.”

“That’s brave,” said Vailond.

“It’s the least I can do,” said Aloth.

“I, um.”

“Yes?” he said raptly.

She couldn’t look him in the eye. “Wish you luck. I guess that’s all.”

“Ah,” he said quietly. “I guess that’s all.”

“Good luck.”

“You said that.”

“Oh. That’s all.”

“Yes.”

You slept with me, and her thoughts ran like treacle. You kept my demons away. Somewhere, somehow, somewhen, I was more than your ticket into the Key’s influence. I just wish I could say here and now. You’re returning to them. You taught me to read, you _slept_ with me, and now you won’t even look at me. Good luck. Good luck, don’t test the wilderness without me. You’re brave but you’re no ranger. That’s all.

Her friends wandered with words then, into roads and cities and places to go when you were done with your task. But Vailond did not address Aloth again, nor Aloth Vailond.

*

Three days later a short elven woman in a battered cloak walked into the town square of Gilded Vale. The bodies had been taken from the tree, though the cut nooses still let you count the village’s disfavor.

There was a woman nearby, carrying a tiny bundle that must have been a baby…and, judging by the frenzied cheer of the villagers around her, a healthy babe. No Hollowborn here. Not anymore.

Vailond avoided the knot of excitement. She walked around the tree to a raised root covered in smooth gray bark. There was a point jabbed in it and healed black. Live through this, she thought. She pressed her dagger into the point and drew down through thin, green, living bark. One long tally mark. She was here after all.

Tyrhos stepped lively beside her as they turned toward home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So…there it is. The project that started with “MUST ROMANCE EDÉR” and tumbled through “Shit, Edér’s not available” into “well, what do I do with my life now?” Vailond Dugauer was the answer.
> 
> I’ve had a lot of fun with this piece. Stuff I wanted to say to my companions, stuff I thought might happen behind the scenes. The moments of relationship building outside the game’s focus.
> 
> I’m always happy for interaction, comments, regardless of how old this thing gets.
> 
> I have scenes drafted for LVPII. It’s going to be a much more romance-oriented story; LVP was in some respects the background for that romance. I probably won’t start posting until I have at least a first pass at Neketaka.
> 
> Fair seas and following winds until we meet again!


End file.
